When I learned the language around my mental illness in my 30s, I started analyzing my childhood and my teen years so I could try to reframe some of my experiences with the understanding of my anxiety and my depression. There is a lot that stands out - especially when I think of my anxiety disorder - but nothing as much as the time I told my Dad and my high school guidance counselor that I wanted to be a nun.
Now, before this story gets out of hand let me spoil it and tell you:
I did not join the convent. (What? I don’t know how well everyone here knows my history!)
This “decision” lasted less than a week and I’m not sure if anyone else even knew. Well…maybe my Dad told his sister who was a nun, I think I recall that.
Also…for the record, I know there is a difference between a Catholic sister and a nun but the average non-Catholic person does not and I am afraid if I say “I wanted to be a sister” it could carry 100 different unintended interpretations so we’re sticking with “nun” - pedantic Catholics be damned.
Where was I? Oh yeah, an atheist who once wanted to be a nun.
And yes, I have said before that I prefer “secular humanist” but for the purpose of this essay “atheist” packs more of a punch.
So…I was 17.
(Back to the story. Again.)
I was a senior in high school and I already knew what college I wanted to go to because I chose it the way most high school kids choose: The one that had the best dorms. I knew I was going to major in Math because I was good at it and I liked it, but I had no idea what I wanted to do with a math degree. Or what I wanted to do for any job ever.
I found myself drowning at a few points in the abstractness of my future. I kept getting into these spirals of thinking of all of the decisions I needed to make about my future and then considering the roads I could end up on and the places they could take me and the thousands of obstacles along the way that could trip me up and I was struggling to breathe…constantly. I had no language to talk about my worry…I just knew it was really disruptive and I felt like I needed a solution: STAT.
Enter: The convent.
It hit me one day: WAIT. If I accept a lifetime of service to the Catholic church…I never have to make another decision again. They would basically decide everything for me! All worry erased!
Let me tell you all of the reasons why this was dumb and proof my anxiety was out of control that the convent seemed like the solution.
I had already started questioning the religion…a lot. I went to a Catholic school and we had religious classes and I spent a lot of them debating dogma, questioning interpretations of scripture, and just being a contrary ass.
I liked making out with people.
I honestly…anxiety aside…did not like being told what to do. I got Saturday detention just because I found uniform restrictions ridiculous. I had my blue shirt and my khaki pants, WHY DID IT MATTER THEY WEREN’T THE SPECIFIC UNIFORM STYLE/BRAND?
Do you see the problem? The girl who didn’t like being told what to wear suddenly wanted to join a convent?
I think my Dad understood all of this. This is probably why he didn’t seem to be too fazed by my “decision” to join the convent.
And of course all of those things hit me…like probably 24 hours after I verbalized my decision. But man…I have such vivid memories of the feelings of worry and anxiety (that of course I couldn’t describe) during that time and the very real but very weird sense of relief that descended on me when I said to myself: BUT IF I JOIN THE CONVENT I NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THIS STUFF AGAIN. I mean, there are days I’m worried about my current future and I think back to the relief that decision gave me and wish there was a way to bottle that into a pill. There are medications that help my anxiety…both as a general condition and a situational response…but nothing makes it fade as completely and quickly as that moment it hit me that I could make a decision that would take all other decisions away from me.
The phrase “relief washed over me” is not descriptive enough. The (albeit temporary) relief that decision gave me did wash over me…and took with it every morsel of worry and anxiety and flushed it down the drain to be rushed into the sewage system far away. After I made that decision it was like an immediate shower that cleansed me of all of my anxiety and I stood there liberated from the pain all of that fear of my future had caused my soul.
I was talking to someone who left the convent a few years ago. She was just discussing her decision to leave and she said, “My mental health was not stable enough to keep with that specific manifestation of my calling.” And you know what? I’m certain if I somehow made it to the vow ceremony, I probably would have found the same thing. It’s like when people think marrying a person who is abusive will somehow make them better. The Church and I had a terrible relationship, just because they could have provided me stability did not mean they would have been good for me over all.
So I’m really glad I realized that giving up making out with people would be too difficult.
I wish I had found a way to talk about my brain and the pain it put me through during those days, so maybe I could have found help outside of bonkers life choices. I wish I could recreate that temporary relief I felt when one decision seemed like the solution to all of my worries. I wish I had even the language to explain some of the emotional and mental pain I was in back then.
Alas…I can’t change the past. But I can be grateful that 17-year old Kim didn’t take that decision any further than isolated conversations with her Dad and her guidance counselor. The atheist inside her was waiting to get out and that would have been a lot more awkward had she taken a vow to serve the church.
I have never been Catholic (though I had Catholic friends) and I am also an atheist who ALSO had this exact same thought process. When things get to be too much there is a part of me that goes, "Hey, wouldn't it be nice to be a nun?"
The Atheist Who Wanted to Be a Nun would be a great title for your memoir! :)