Uncertainty

I am not sure what to write about tonight. Eva said I should tell the exorcism story, but I had my mind set on writing the cat story, which leaves me uncertain...

I am going to take the request first and tell you the exorcism story. I am not sure if it could be put into words, if I can tell it again or if it will be meaningful at all, but here is how it went. 

My mother was convinced that all my bad luck was due to a higher, evil force and so when her colleague told her about an exorcist priest, she decided he was going to be the solution to her daughter's problems, the long awaited and finally found one. 

On Monday morning, she asked me if I was free in the afternoon. I said yes, why? *and that is when I learned that I should always answer with no, why* She said she would like me to go with her and my father to church tonight; there is a priest she would like me to speak with. 

I didn't want to disappoint my mother, I am already a disappointment to her in so many ways, so I decided I should go just for the sake of pleasing her, it seemed such a small effort to make. 

And so we went. I hadn't been to church in a long time, and it seemed that since I had last been to the service, they have added a load of prayers and rosaries prior to the actual mass, which left me feeling exhausted even before the service started. And when it finally did, it took yet another hour if not more to finish.

I am not sure how I used to withstand all these ceremonies. I remembered that day why I stopped believing in all the rituals and put an end to my practicing them. I couldn't stand how fake everyone was. How mean they were. How they said the prayers between their teeth while looking at each other with utter disdain. The rosary sounded like a school poem they felt forced to recite. The mass sounded like a test they studied hard to pass. And if you ask for my opinion, they failed miserably. 

No one seemed truthful. No one seemed there because they wanted to. They all somehow "had" to be there. They either had nothing else to do, either felt it was a duty they needed to fulfill. I so desperately wished one of them would smile or seem in any way sincere.

Anyway, it was what happened after the service that needs to be told. After having waited in a "queue" of people who wanted to meet with the priest, my turn finally arrived. I went in his too white office with my mother. What ensued was so bizarre I don't even know how to describe it, but I will try. 

It started as a simple conversation. But soon enough my mother told the priest that I haven't been going to church for many years now. This occurred right after I tried to pull myself out of the session by telling the priest that I had felt peace while in the service. She just had to tell him all about my lost devotion. As if I had defected from Christianity. I haven't actually; I just did from the church. 

This led to the priest asking my mom to leave us alone. And he started bombarding me with all kinds of unnecessary questions, not to call them stupid. He tried in every way he could think of to convince me to rejoin the church. He then proceeded to make me repeat some long sentences after him, and repeat them I did, until he reached the last syllable, and then I didn’t. It exasperated him, but I felt no guilt; I had warned him not to try with me from the very start. 

At the end of a frustrating hour or so, somehow the subject of my insomnia came up. And the priest’s face lightened up as if he had just found the missing piece of my puzzle. He inquired about my dreams, and when I said that my recurrent dream was cockroaches, he gave me the title of a book to read and referred me to yet another priest who would REALLY help me. 

I wasn’t going to go to the other priest if it hadn’t been for the first one who insisted in telling my parents about it, there was no escape from going after that.

A couple of days later, I went to see the other priest. And I am not feeling into going into lots of details anymore, but the essential is that he performed the same ritual on me among many others in the church’s yard. It was an absolutely ridiculous ritual which involved him and another priest praying over my head and blowing “the Holy Spirit” IN MY EYES and noticing that when they blow their disgusting breath in my face, my eyes TWITCH!!! Oh yeah, they twitched!!!! And that of course meant that I was “possessed” by something and the treatment includes taking off my “Satanic” pendant (it was just a random piece of metal!!!) and puncturing the bottle of holy water with a pin and spraying the water every night in the house in the form of a cross. I would also have to come back next Thursday and bring with me water, olive oil (not frying oil) and rough salt, they would “pray” on those too and give me the guidelines on their usage.

Needless to say I never went back there.