Lord God, I come to you a sinner, and I humbly repent for my sins
I once watched the small, uncertain silhouette of a woman enter through the faded wooden doors of a church located nowhere in particularly. She thought herself a faithful woman, the strength of her faith tested many times; she did not lose herself, for she was not weak. Doubt and distance crept in, clawed at her, nearly unmade her, until finally the guilt of the prospect of losing her faith was less bearable than the anxiety that kept her hidden from the world, even now.
Her hooves and her cane knocked against the granite floor, quietly, unsure if their owner would be allowed into this holy place. Through cross-hatched slats, I watched as her sensitive nose crinkled when she passed the thurible, and the lingering ashes of incense and smoke. I watched as she regarded the icons, daring herself to whisper a few words to the likenesses only ever imagined from scripture. Finally, I watched her struggle to kneel before the Virgin Mother, and produced a loose string of beads to clasp in her hands to pray.
I couldn't tell you what she told Mary; maybe, through tears, she spoke a prayer for her own mother, who had died not knowing she gave birth to something capable of so much destruction. Maybe she sat in disgust at how two people of similar names could live such opposite, painful lives. What I do know for certain, is she found something else among the flickering candles: she found me, the confessional booth in the corner, and the priest within it who spoke my words to her. She took her leave from Mary with the sign of the cross, and walked the path to her absolution.
To her surprise, she found the booth spacious enough to accommodate her, though she took a low bow through the curtained entrance to mind the antlers she had forgotten she shed just a week prior. She held off her pilgrimage until afterwards, as to not draw more unwanted attention to herself than she would already have brought. Even still, she shrouded herself in a veil, trying to cover the ears that flicked and bent towards the echoes that reverberated throughout the modest hall. She sat for a moment, nervous, wondering if it was too late to leave, weighing once more her sins against her loneliness.
And then I whispered "Hello," and those ears, instead, turned towards me.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." she began with the smoothing of her skirt. She says she does not remember the last time she confessed. "A real confession," she clarifies, "one between God and I alone, and not anyone else who might have access to my files." She admits that she did not know she was confessing "wrong" until recently; "I never truly felt God had forgiven me for what I am. I know now why that is."
And I welcomed her with open arms, and assured her that her words were just between us, safe from anyone who might use them to harm her. "You are free to begin whenever you wish, my child."
Meekly, she said, "Father. I am wrathful, Father." and under the chipped-paint eyes of the crucifix, spoke of the father who abandoned her for the forgiveness of his own sins. She worried that she inherited his anger, inherited everything that brought the mythos of her father to life. "I do not wish to become anything like that monster," she sighed, "but am I not justified in the anger I feel?" And she told me she's tired of keeping up appearances, and all the pity that comes with the association to a man who wouldn't have hesitated to kill her if she too dared to step out of line. To her, it seemed that no matter what she did, she would always be seen as nothing more than the one who bears the sin of being called his 'daughter'.
From the pocket of her hand-knitted shawl, she pulled out a stack of letters, already stamped and addressed. "My own," she added, "he only wrote to me once." Their weight was always noticeable in a pocket or bag when she was out, waiting for the day she would be brave enough to drop them in a mailbox to be rid of them forever. The letters dated back years, written and re-written, and left shunned in desk drawers or shoe boxes for so long much of the ink had smudged or faded away. Many contained paragraphs of questions that had remained unanswered still, while others were so full of angered redactions that you could almost see entirely through the yellowed sheets. "If the pen was truly mightier than the sword," she spat, "I wonder if my words would have cut him as deeply as his absence cut me."
And for a moment, all I could hear was panting. I imagined her fists clenched, gripping the velvet cushion beneath her, or crumpling the stack of letters, wishing she could return them to pulp. Maybe, she thought, for the first time ever she felt justified in sharing her anger in the presence of another. I could not tell you what it meant to be haunted by someone's name alone, nor how it felt to see the illusion of someone you are meant to care so deeply for shatter in an instant. Part of her blamed her curiosity — some part of her hated herself for learning about him in the first place, as if she had any choice in the matter.
But instead, the adrenaline ran its course through her, until finally her body could not keep up. There was no longer any righteous rage, but the rattling of a beaded bracelet, now wielding a kerchief, being raised unsteadily to a forehead dewed with sweat. She coughed a few times, and let out what could only be described as a half bleat and half pained groan.
"Apologies, Father," she wheezed, "I am not quite fully what I once was." She gave the bitter approximation of a chuckle, ending it with a triplet of dry coughs muffled by the kerchief.
Catching her breath, she said, "Father, I have been envious." When she was younger, she used to watch a family of deer that roamed outside her convent. The family used to trawl the tree line for berries, and lay in the shade of ash trees on warmer days. One fall, the family had a new member: a fawn, and she used to watch as it hopped and clumsily skipped between the larger members of its family. When she had tried to emulate this one night after dinner, the nuns were not nearly as impressed. She spoke of this with a weightlessness not before present in her words, even dared herself to smile when describing how the chase finally stopped when she banged her antlers on a table she had previously been able to pass under. The memory was worth every amount of potato peeling she had to do as consequence for the disturbance.
During the Impasse, she told me she was prepared to lose her legs, though she was eternally thankful that they were ultimately spared, and she regained most of her mobility with the assistance of a cane. Still, she couldn't help but feel like a burden; in the few times a month she went out to buy groceries, or walk the park when the garden of her apartment would not suffice, she could not shake the glares from other people. The world, in all senses of the word, was moving faster than her, and even well-meaning attempts at assistance felt to her like condescension. She began to resent every check-up, every physical therapy appointment where it was clear she was plateauing, and no amount of work would restore her to what she once was. "I was not meant to live this long." she said, as if she had rehearsed it already in her head. "In some ways, I feel as though I am already dead."
I told her that in speaking, she could assure herself that she was not dead, and that there was a life yet for her to live. And despite everything, she still believed God had some sort of plan for her, even though she felt that she had done little to deserve it.
The transition from cell to apartment was anything but smooth, especially for her, and some part of her, even still, itched for the routine she had grown comfortable with. She lacked the energy to fully throw herself into the world; though others had tried to bring her into the fold, with and without strings attached, she thought herself far too volatile to exist with others. Some days, the pain in her legs would flare up, and she would spend her days in bed drifting in and out of consciousness. On others, she was nearly brought to tears by the frustration lopsided crocheting patterns, or being unable to stop her hands from shaking long enough to thread a needle. There were days where she was entirely euthymic, where she was able to feel like more than a cracked pane of glass, waiting to shatter.
In her eyes, much of life had already escaped her, and she lived in a perpetual state of 'too lates'. She was too late to visit the monastery she grew up in, if the nuns were even allowed to remember her in the first place. Too late to catch up on the world that left her behind, and made her feel foolish for trying something new. Too late to make the impression on those who could help her that she was anything more than a bird who had grown too accustomed to her cage.
"Things were much more bearable when I had somebody around to help. She tried to be patient with me, even though I knew seeing me like this frustrated her." I could hear her sniffle, followed by the sound of shuffling closer to the partition dividing the sinner and the saintly.
She moved her face as close to the slat as was comfortable and whispered, "Father, I have been lustful. I —" and she let her words hang in the air. Beyond the curtain, her eyes once more found the icon of Mary, and all the low-burning candles in the votive stand, and all she could do was shrivel up. She told me that she once fell in love with another woman when she was younger. The two found each other, seemingly, only out of coincidence of being the only ones around the same age, and in a similar situation — in that sea of weirdness, they thought they were the only ones who would truly understand each other. She said her lover was strong in ways she could never be, and she was patient in the ways her lover seldom was. Even with the world falling apart, they could put on the illusion that things were normal, for better or worse.
"I was too naive to see it was never going to last." she remarked with a cracking voice. She feared being alone again, especially in a world that was infinitely many times larger than the convent, then cell, she grew up in. She wanted so desperately to be wanted; "I thought I could make her want to stay with me. I did everything to make a place where the two of us could belong." And she began to sniffle as her words began to match the torrent of her tears.
She choked out that it was her that had invited her lover into her bed. "I cannot describe the ways that I wanted her, even now, but the moments our bodies were intertwined, and her lips were on mine, were some of the only times I truly felt I had her." It was one of the few times she could look at someone and think "there is something wrong with you that is also wrong with me." And then she told me her lover left without another word, and in the newly christened silence of her apartment, she tried to pray the embers of her love, and the guilt, away; she could not think to look at her body for weeks after, she added.
I could feel her press her weight to the side of the booth, allowing the sanctuary structure to cradle her. She whispered that she could not hate the sin, because in the act of committing sin she was reminded there was more to life than pain, and the isolation of her apartment. That there was more to her body than something to be experimented on or to be fixed. She said, too, that she was unable to love the sinner — and she paused for a moment, her hooved feet scraping against the wooden floor. "How can I love her, Father," she said, "if her greatest act of love towards me was leaving me behind?"
In the silence that followed, all she could say was "I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry." She said she believed that she was not worthy of confession, and with her sins laid bare, one of the few pillars in her life she could still cling to would cast her out too; this would be deserved, she thought. And she sat, waiting for a response, a punishment, a penance she would have to fulfill in order to return herself to the light after spending so much time in darkness. There was nothing this woman wouldn't have done to feel, for the first time ever, that she was worthy of being redeemed.
It was in the quiet of the church located nowhere in particular, that the uncertain woman heard for the first time, that she need only to give mercy to herself.