Don't Get Used To This

Today has been a long day.

It started at 9:30 a.m. on this Saturday morning. I woke up early to finish putting together a filing cabinet. I then had a home made sausage-egg McBagel for brunch, and headed over to the Pleasant Hill area and spent several hours hanging out with Kevin and Richie. We went down to the river, watched Napoleon Dynamite, and played video games. It rocked.

After that, I returned home to continue work on the filing cabinet, and then went over and watched Ace Ventura: Pet Detective at Whit's house. So amazing, gotta love Jim Carey.

I got back late, and it had already been a nice, full day. I talked to Josh some, read his journal, thought about life.

Talked to my sister some, got from her an update on a friend that I haven't talked to in a while. I learned more about him by reading a few quotes from that conversation that she posted on her facebook page than I have from the conversations I've had with him over the past three years. In three years, I don't think he's talked about God or his faith to me even once. I find myself wondering where it all came from, but in a good way, of course. Because I've wondered about that, but been afraid to ask, because I didn't know. And so it's good to finally know.

The conversation shifted some to church and faith. We talked some... briefly... about Catholicism. She's pretty much where I thought she was, distanced some from it in some ways, but not entirely.

It made me think of the effect that all that has had on our family. A couple years ago, we did a stint in Catholicism. It was really more my mom and my sister diving in, and my dad and I going along in support. I don't think anything has ever been as damaging to our family as that. And even to this day, probably about a good year after we pretty much left it behind (at least as a family, though my mom and sister still go to occasional masses), I still see the effects of it.

Like my dad, who still feels the need to point out all the flaws of Catholicism, as though it were his mission in life.

Or my mom, who still gets defensive every time we talk about the Catholic church. It must be the only topic in this entire world that is all but taboo in our family.

Or my sister, who still can't bring herself to hear the ways it hurt my dad and myself because it would mean talking about the bad things in Catholicism. I don't even know if she ever reads any of my blogs, but if she does, I hope she knows that I don't hold it against her. It just makes me sad.

Or myself. Have I really been able to let go of the resentment I've held towards my mother for dragging us into this? Or the bitterness of all the years of harshest criticism of my Protestant, Baptist tradition that I heard from her, that came crashing down on me virtually overnight a little while back? Sometimes I think I have. But every now and then, I'm not so sure.

Or the bitterness I feel towards the Catholic church, and towards Catholics, for the way I was treated, and for what their tradition has done to my family.

Or all the things I can't even write here because it hurts too much. The things that bring me to tears just to think about.

Our family has been through Hell and back. We've moved around our entire lives. We've gone through coup d'etats, political insurgency and civil wars. We've come within inches of our lives and been evacuated. We've lost everything we owned and started all over. We've traveled the entire world. We've been kicked out of countries. We've fought the evils of the world, both within the Church and without, all alone, with no one to stand beside us, time and again. We've rocked more boats than I can count. We've been abandoned and stabbed in the back by friends. And we've returned to our home country to find it a foreign place to us, and we've struggled to belong somewhere.

But through it all, we've had each other. When it was us against the world, it was always us. And we've come through it all, and been better, stronger, and closer for it on the other side.

All but this. We've put it behind us, for the most part, and moved on. We don't talk about it, most of the time. But I wonder if we'll ever make it through. I'm beginning to think it will always be there. What's the saying? An elephant in the room? Nobody's talking about it, everybody steps around it, but we all know it's there. I don't know that we'll ever fully recover from this.

Of all the things that we've come through, of all the things to come between us, that it should be our faith. Ironic, isn't it? We've gone through everything and done it together, but it is our faith that splits us apart, leaving some on one side, some on the other, and all hurting.

It's not that it's a huge big deal all the time. It hasn't made our family dysfunctional. We're still very close. And 99% of the time, this stuff isn't even there. It's just the occasional things that rise to the surface, from time to time, and I can see the effects that this has had on my family.

It's times like when my dad goes on another rant about Catholicism, and while I agree with pretty much everything he's saying, it just isn't helping anything. It's times when it's been a while since I've talked to my sister about church and faith, but I'm afraid to ask her something like, "Still going to St. Jude's? Still consider yourself Catholic?" because I'm afraid she'll think that I'm disapproving, that I'm hoping the answer is, "No."

It's times like tonight, sitting here and thinking about those things, and seeing how our family is still so affected, so torn, by all of this, that it brings me to tears. It's all the things I couldn't write on here because they still hurt too much.

So I ended this really awesome day on a sad note. Sitting back and looking at my family, it made me cry to think of what this has done to us. I don't think I've cried in... well, months. Many, many months. And I'm really not sure about putting this post up. I guess this has become another "journal entry" post, of sorts. I don't usually let people see this far inside of me. And if you asked me, "Then why are you posting this?" I wouldn't be able to answer you. I just am. Don't get used to this, it may never happen again.

Have a good night y'all. It's been a roller coaster of a day for me. It's a Smashing Pumpkins night.

I'll see some of y'all tomorrow, before you even read this, if anyone reads it at all.