My initial understanding of my dad's joke in the background of a phone call with my mom a few weeks ago with completely off base. I am not sure why I was so dumb as to believe he'd be accepting of a choice in my life, let alone one that involved becoming anything other than Catholic. My father and I have a complicated, painful relationship. He never really accepted my dedication to dance or to school or to community service or to anything, really. He's never accepted who I am. I'm not sure why I thought this would be different.
If you've read from the beginning, you know I have an older brother and no other siblings. A first born boy is all an Italian father could ever ask for. The son is always the most important. So when Italians have girls first, they always try for another kid. My uncle has four girls. Why? Because he was trying for a boy and never succeeded. My father succeeded on the first try, and that was enough for him. I was the kid who came later and wasn't really planned for. Girls don't carry on family names, don't play football, watch sports, or smoke cigars. They're no fun. Girls with fathers like my father, don't really get along with them. It's actually quite simple.
Except that it sucks.
My parents are still married. I lived with my dad all 19 years before going off to college. Whenever I want to go home to see my mom, it means seeing my dad, too. And I hate that. Honestly, I prefer to shut him out entirely because the emotional roller coaster of hoping for good days or times then plummeting into fighting is far worse than the nothing I try to maintain.
My father went to Catholic school for 9 years: through the 8th grade. He's made it overwhelmingly clear to me in the last three weeks that even though he doesn't go to Church, he is still a Catholic and will always be a Catholic. And you just don't leave the Catholic Church. I get it. I get that he was raised a certain way and that he believed all of it and still believes most of it. But I don't. I didn't go to Catholic school. I didn't go to Church every day for the first part of my life. I eventually grew out of the fear of the devil and of going to hell. I don't carry those things with me; they just aren't a part of me. So I didn't have major forces holding me back from growing into my own faith. It just so happens that that faith fits right in with Judaism, a religion that very few people adhere to, a religion that most people just don't understand.
My dad surprisingly knows more about Jews and Judaism than my mom does. My grandpa went to an almost all Jewish high school so he knows a lot of the beliefs that most Christians don't (most important, why Jesus wasn't the messiah). But that doesn't change the fact that he doesn't want me to be Jewish. My dad thinks I should just accept that I have an "intellectual conflict in my head" about G-d and Jesus. What the hell does that even mean?
Oh, by the way, Easter was terrible.
Anyways, I told my parents I have tried and failed enough times to understand the cross that I am not going to do it anymore. It's not worth the pain and frustration. I tried for them, for my mom, for my brother, for my niece, but at some point, my mental and emotional health have to take priority. In the last year and a half, I've realized and decided that time has come. I will never go back to a Catholic Church for a long list of reasons, but I will not be a Christian because Christianity just doesn't make sense. If other people make it work in their heads, good for them, but I don't feel like I need to. I don't need to be saved. I'm good. Life is about learning, helping others, and enjoying it while you can. That's all I've ever needed, and, quite frankly, is what my mother raised me to believe. Even my dad told me that he can't stand ultra-religious, evangelical Christians. He keeps telling me he is going to un-friend the mother of my brother's best friend because she posts religious stuff a hundred times a day on Facebook. He thinks those kinds of people, who think only about religion and "depend entirely on G-d" are delusional. "I believe that G-d just said, 'be a good person'" my father tells me over the phone.
So why does is matter what religion I follow as long as I am a good person?
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