SPEAK
Finding peace of mind
How a sin helped me escape my own hell
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been far too long since my last confession."
And so began a nearly year-and-a-half struggle in my self-inflicted hell.
My family is not religious.I can recall
only a handful of Passes we attended in the Roman Catholic Church. Wednesday afternoons during my elementary school years were devoted to a Sunday school-type of class. I dreaded them. I never wanted to go until I started crushing on boys.
By Heather Melanson
hmelanson@kansan.com
Contributed photo
and even then I wanted Wednesday to be
Thursday so I could go to gymnastics.
Seven-year-old Heather before her First Communion at Fort Leavenworth's Saint lenatus church in 1992.
In high school, I found myself believing in everything the Catholic Church didn't: abortion rights, gay relationships and birth control, in particular. My boyfriend and I started seeing each other when I was 16 and we dated through part of college. His family was more devout Catholic than mine, and sometimes my boyfriend and I butted heads because of our different moral views.
On March 16,2006, I walked into the St. Lawrence chapel and into a confessional.
I told my boyfriend we had to go to confession, and I meant ASAP.The only thought flashing through my brain was that I was going to die and spend an eternity burning in hell. First, I needed to collect my thoughts. And my sins.
Toward the end of February during my freshman year at KU, I borrowed my boyfriend's Catechism of the Catholic Church book and flipped through it out of curiosity in my dorm room.
I had almost a decade of sins to recount to a priest, and I didn't know how I was going to remember everything. Over a few weeks, though, I did manage to compile a gigantic list of sins. It probably reached 100.
The minute I knelt down and uttered that phrase for forgiveness, I started sobbing, so loudly my boyfriend said he could hear me over the fountain outside the
I freaked out. I realized I had a truckload of sins that had piled up, and I hadn't been to confession since I was 11.
One of the first things I read about was sinning. The Catechism breaks down the 10 Commandments based on the Church's beliefs. Anything sexual outside of marriage was a big no-no, missing weekly Mass is wrong and working on Sundays shouldn't happen—just to name a few sins.
Fear pulsed through my body when I read that dying with just one mortal sin purposefully unconfessed could lead a person to eternal hell. Why did I even care? I wasn't religious. But I suddenly found myself caring, and in a monumental way.
confessional.
After my first confession in years, I felt relieved. I was ready to start anew, so I quickly pushed away friends who I thought would cause me to sin. I even lectured my family on what was morally right and wrong.
In the process of
becoming more religious, I spiraled out of control. I became obsessed with tracking and counting sins. Religiously (no pun intended) I recorded sins on note cards and notebook paper; and the papers became so filled with my scribbles that I could hardly read them. I wanted to avoid confession as much as possible, though, and I went only a handful of times.
I had a routine of questions I asked myself if I ever felt like I had sinned, which was all the time, every day.
I'd reach for my hidden paper of sins and add to the daily—even hourly—growing list. It was a vicious cycle. I talked to my boyfriend about my problem, but he only saw the tip of the iceberg. I felt like no one could fully understand what was going on in my head.
I tried to completely change myself. "Bad" music was out of the question, especially anything with sexual lyrics ("I Kissed a Girl") would've been a definite no-go). I stopped reading *Cosmo*, one of my favorite magazines. My weekends didn't include Sundays, which now revolved around making sure I went to Mass. I stopped showing my boyfriend affection. I hardly gave him a peck on the mouth.
"Did you know it was a sin? Did you knowingly and consciously do it? Did you think about it before you did it and then act it out?"
"Ugh!" Idk. "I've done what that person wrote about!"
I'd battle with myself on whether my thought or action met those requirements. If I checked off all three requirements, I added the sin to my list. If I had any doubt about whether those requirements were met, I'd still add it.
I compulsively checked a Catholic Web site called EWTN. It has a Q&A section where people can ask anything about the faith. I read every question pertaining to sins each day for months, which only made me more scrupulous.
Out of all of my friends, I had always been the calm and logical one. In my high school Spanish class, my teacher asked my classmates who they would elect to be in charge if something went terribly wrong at school. All heads in the class turned toward me.
I was hanging out with a friend who was on mid-tour break from Iraq. We were definitely attracted to each other, which was made obvious when he moved in for a kiss. I resisted at first because my boyfriend and I were still together. He persisted, though, and a few times I said,"No, I can't do
Yet I was the one who went mental.
Almost a year and a half after picking up that Catechism, I reached my breaking point. I was mentally exhausted from counting and tracking "sins."
this", but never said why. Why was because I wanted to avoid confession and heartbreak.
I had said no multiple times, but he turned toward me one last time and mashed his lips against mine. I caved. That was the best make-out session I have ever had. For the first time in more than a year, I felt relief.
Since that summer; my scrupulous thoughts have significantly diminished. Sometimes things will creep into my head and I'll catch myself tightly closing my eyes for a split second or shaking my head, like I'm trying to squeeze or rattle the thought out of my brain.
I'm happy to say I haven't recorded a sin since that make-out session, and I can't even remember where I've stashed my hidden papers scribbled with sins.
I still believe in God and I still pray, but I don't go to Mass or confession anymore. And I'm okay with that right now.I have peace of mind.
October 30,2008
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