Catholic : 01.30.03 @ 10:33 pm

Suddenly, I'm just so sad. I'm not even sure why I'm sad, it was just this sudden onslaught of thoughts and feelings, mostly involving the fact that I'm queer.
Queer is such a better word then lesbian. Less... clear cut. Nothing in life is clear cut, I wish society would stop thinking such. Yes. So I'm queer. I'm queer and too many people in this world have a problem with that, and I suppose that's what's making me sad.
One of the colleges I want to look at doesn't have a GSA or anything remotely resembling that. Granted, it's a Catholic University run by a bunch of merry Jesuits, so that's not that surprising.
Wait, scratch that. They do have a queer group. It's called "Rainbow Connection" and one of its purposes is to "be respectful of the Catholic teachings on human sexuality". AKA "Thou can be Queer but Thou must not act on Thy nature. Go, be celibate and spread the good word!"
Okay, those aren't the exact wordings of the Catholic Catechism (spelling? It's a big book that my father has somewhere. I looked up homosexuality once, when I was still Catholic. That's basically what it says).
Yea. I was Catholic, once upon a time. It's hard to say that because almost anyone will tell you - once a Catholic, always a Catholic. I can still walk into any Catholic church and feel like I've walked home. I know that I could kneel at one of the hard wooden pews, gaze at the candles burning lit for loved ones (The Catholic fax machine to heaven!), and feel perfectly at peace. I still automatically cross myself, regardless of the church I'm visiting. There's still that section of the Our Father that I don't know because the priest says it for us. I can still sit down and say the rosary with the rosary my parents gave me on my first communion.
It's all so familiar, so ritualistic, so comforting. That's why people are Catholic. I very much doubt that half of the people who show up to mass every Saturday or Sunday actually believe in God. They're just there because this is their home. They need that hour of familiar ritual to stay sane.

Why, you may ask, am I still not Catholic if I sound like I miss it so much?
Well besides the fact that I don't believe in God, and I believe that Jesus was just a very nice dead dude who went around spreading love and all that warm fuzziness, the Church and I don't stand on the same level on a lot of political things.
I'm pro sex. Pro Choice (in a round about way). Pro Queer. Pro Safe Sex (aka birth control). And I flat out hate it when someone tells me what I can and can not be.
Needless to say, I do not fit into the Catholic community very well. Not to mention the general Christian community. So finally, I asked myself - what the hell is a lesbian atheist sex addict doing up here in front of all these nice old ladies, reading to them from a book that I think is a crock full of bull shit?
And that is why I am no longer Catholic. One day, I just told my parents that I wasn't going to go to regular mass anymore because I just didn't believe in it and felt like a hypocrite for going.

My father and I haven't communicated well since then. I've been told I'm a disappointment many times.
Catholicism and my relationship with my father are too intertwined. When I gave up being a Catholic, I gave up any hope of a relationship with my father too.

I miss that. I used to be Daddy's little girl. He and I built a soap box car together and I raced it down the big hill the first year our town had a soap box derby. Starting from when I was about seven, he and I would go ice fishing almost every weekend during the winter. He used to build me things - book shelves and doll bunk beds - all the time. I'd be up in his shop, swinging on the swing he put up there just for me so I could be up there with Dad. Whenever he worked until late at night, I'd write him a little note in child's scrawl telling him how much I loved him and I hope work went okay. He took me camping a few times and I'd help him pitch the familiar green tent that has been with this family since before I was born.
Then, I grew up and somewhere along the lines I lost all of that and here I am, sitting at the computer typing this out with tears blurring my vision of the monitor because I want that back. I want the arguments to stop. I want to be able to talk to him again without him yelling at me. I want him to be proud of me and the person I grew up to be. I want him to stop saying all these things that he knows hurts me. But I also don't want to give up myself. I don't want to - no I can't give up what makes me who I am in order to please him, in order to have that relationship with him again.

I think our relationship is too far gone to be anything more then the love-hate relationship we have now.
Sometimes though, I can hear it in his voice when he talks about my photography, or when he forces me to drag out my portfolio for ever Tom, Dick and Joe he brings home from work. The pride. Perhaps its during these moments when he thinks � By god my daughter may be a raving liberal vegetarian atheist dyke, but she just might make something of herself.
Perhaps.

/A
mood: sad
music: Classical Playlist

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