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I’m 18F, and I grew up drowning in Catholicism. Church every Sunday without fail. Youth groups, retreats, Christian and Catholic schools from kindergarten onward. It wasn’t really a choice. It was just life, because of my family, especially my adoptive mom (56F). I believed because I was taught to believe. I didn’t know anything else.
But faith isn’t all sunshine and stained glass. For me, it’s been a thunderstorm. There are things my church did, things they said, the way they treated people, the guilt they weaponized that left a bad taste in my mouth. It gave me the ick. And it made me start asking questions I wasn’t supposed to ask: Do I actually want this? Is this mine, or is it just hers?
I know my mom means well. This is her whole world. It’s how she survived, how she made sense of things, how she raised me. She’s the most loving, kind, supportive single mom I could’ve asked for. She fought for me when my dad’s family didn’t want us. She held us together. I see her heart in this. But I’m realizing her dream isn’t mine, and pretending it feels like lying to myself.
It started clicking in high school. Slowly, I’ve been pulling away. I still have to go every Sunday bc that’s non-negotiable in our house. But now she signed me up for the Lector’s group. I told her I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to. She said, “Just try it for a year.” It’s her dream. She can’t do it because her eyes are getting worse from degenerative myopia, so she wants me to do it for her.
I get it. I do. But standing at that pulpit feels like a nightmare, not a calling. I don’t want to give my Sundays to a man in the sky. I want them back for me. To rest, to figure out who I am without all this.
And still, there’s this ache in me that says I owe her. At least a year. She gave me everything. She chose me when other people wouldn’t. So how do I say no to the one thing she’s asking of me, even if it’s tearing me up inside? She’s doing this out of love. I just wish she loved me enough to let me choose my own.