confessional
Companion Song: Apocalypse - Cigarettes After Sex
There’s this scene in Fleabag where she’s sat in a confessional, pouring out her deep dark desires to the priest on the other side; it goes like this-
"I want someone to tell me what to wear in the morning... I want someone to tell me what to eat. What to like, what to hate, what to rage about, what to listen to… I want someone to tell me what to believe in, who to vote for…I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I think I’ve been getting it wrong… and even though I don’t believe your bullshit, and I know that scientifically nothing I do makes any difference in the end anyway, I’m still scared.
Why am I still scared?"
The first time I watched this scene, I found Fleabag’s desires wholly unrelatable. As a newly-minted anti-churcher, there was nothing I wanted more than freedom from the religious ideology that had strangled me for the last 20 years of my life.
I wanted to take long drives to nowhere at 3 AM. I wanted to wear a low-cut blouse and not talk to my mother about it. I wanted to peel the skin of church-me from now-me like a crisp apple, and then burn the remnants of that peel in a campfire and howl at the moon.
I did a lot of growing, the years after I left the church. I stretched and pushed and carved out a new mind for myself, one that took in the knowledge of worlds outside of the lone star I was raised in.
But recently, I re-watched that Fleabag confessional, and I found my views had changed. That fiery passion I’d kept in the interest of self preservation, of I’m-Never-Going-Back, died down enough for me to step into my own confessional.
I rest my back against the partition, pop some edibles, and spill my deep dark desires to the listening priest.
I want to walk into a place that feels like home. I want to take off my coat and hang it up on the pew and shake peoples’ hands, people that have known me since I was 2 years old. I want to work in community with others, to feel helpful, even if it’s for the wrong reasons. I want to fall in love, I want to sing worship songs on a stage, I want to feel holy fire for a loving entity again.
I miss the hope of it. The communal aching for a plane beyond our own, for an immortal realm, for the fairytale of joyous reunions with our dead brothers and sisters.
I miss the Sunday snacks. I miss the warm coffee, the quick cheek kisses, the loud rooms full of morning sun. I miss setting up chairs and staying late to take them down again.
Even though it was all built on a story that I don’t believe in anymore, even though I now know scientifically nothing I do makes any difference in the end anyway, I still miss it. The love, the joy turned up to a blinding 10, the clapping and stomping during songs written for a Great and Benevolent Creator.
When I wake in the middle of the night in a terror-sweat, half blind from nightmares, the first arms I reach for are those of my Old God. The comfort I found in him as a child was total, all encompassing.
My mind may have forgotten but my body still remembers what it was like to be in his church, settled into my mother’s chest, feeling the vibrations of her song for him reverberate through my whole body.
I long for an Old God whose name I’ve abandoned. I long for a church that I turned my back on, for better or worse.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.