I feel so damn guilty every time my mother asks us children whether we want to go to church and I decline.

Politely decline, but decline nonetheless.

My mother is a devout Roman Catholic. Not a fanatic by far, she doesn't go to church every Sunday, but as Christmas approaches she tends to go more and more.

I don't like going to church not because it's a bad experience, but because of the guilt.

I can stand the guilt.

Guilty that I should believe what my mother believes, but I don't. Guilty when because I have nothing appropriate for church, nothing conservative that doesn't look like a potato sack. Guilty because I'm giving in and obeying orders and pressures from a priest of a religion that I do not believe in. Guilty that I'm making myself do it, guilty when I take the bread from the priest, when I try to swallow the dry piece of cardboard and avoiding the wine, so as to avoid some more guilt.

Guilty when I face all the happy, smiling people, shaking their hands and wishing them peace because the priest told me to, guilty when church gets out and I stand a step behind my mother, hands clasped, head down, being dragger from group to smiling group, as they each exclaim how much I've grown and how pretty I look and ask about school and friends and them dismiss me to follow as the obediant puppy behind my mother.

Guilty when I slink off, not quite willing to run with my brothers ahead, get home in two minutes, panting, dripping with sweat, or to dawdle on the whims of my mother as she slowly drifts away from the church.

So I walk in the middle. In front of my parents, behind my brother, never saying much, feeling like I shouldn't, because I havn't been spoken to first.

Maybe I hate church because I'm squeezed into the modest constricting box my mother has left out for me all these years, and I just can't be myself at church, and I can't pray when I want to, believe what I want to, talk when I want to, leave when I want to.

If I did I would be labled a freak, an outsider, mentally damaged, impolite, /different/.

I hate church, but I'll go on Christmas day, because my mother wants me to.

If I refuse to go on Christmas day, she'll probably throw me out of the house in my underwear.

Bah.

That's what I say. Bah.

Bahbahbah.

.

Rosie.

Before&After