Thanks for "helping".

One thing I might mention: I have Bipolar Disorder. There's a point to mentioning that, though.
A long time ago, before I was diagnosed, I was going through a rough time.. I was in a major depression, wanted to kill myself, etc. I had just lost a couple friends due to my own issues and I was feeling sorry for myself, so I went on over to the chapel and wrote some pitiful entries in the community prayer journal we keep there. And I probably sat there and moped and sobbed for a good while, I'm pretty positive I posted a facebook status about how miserable I was and how I just needed some contact, a hug, something. Yea, it was ridiculous.
So at some point, a friend of mine comes in and goes up to the front and prays a rosary. So I waited for him, and he came over to me when he was done, offered to talk, gave me a hug.. I felt like my prayers had been answered. Of course, this particular person and I were radically different.. He was insanely conservative, and I had started to "rebel" and move away from the Catholic norm at that point. He hated my tattoos and piercings, he commented on how my hair was always changing colors, and it seemed like he had this holier than thou attitude that I could never get past. We had definitely butted heads before. But he was there, and I needed someone.
So we start talking, and I tell him how alone I feel, and I tell him about how I think I'm bipolar but can't do anything about it because I can't afford therapy or anything, etc. And he sits and listens for a long, long time before I'm finally done. Then he starts.
He tells me about the Pieta Prayer book, and all the things in it. He tells me how powerful the Rosary is. He tells me how wonderful daily mass is, how it strengthens you. He tells me all the ways you can learn more about Catholicism.
Now tell me, how the fuck does that comfort or help me at all? All I needed was a hug, an ear, someone to listen to me cry and vent. I didn't need or want a spiritual counselor. And God isn't medicine, he can't cure my mental disorder, hate to tell you, boo.
And that isn't the first time he tries to push shit like that on me or other people, either. He's constantly writing little suggestions in the prayer journal for books to read, things to do, what mystery of the rosary to pray today. He doesn't ever get personal, try to be helpful. Just makes suggestions. Often the same ones over and over. And I can't shake the feeling that he has some need to earn credits.. not to help people just to help them, but to know that he's the one doing it.
It sickens me when Christians spread the word because they want points. That's the vibe I keep getting from him. Not telling me cause he genuinely wants me to feel better, but because he wants to be the one to tell me. And he wants to know that I went and did what he said. It's like he's afraid of damnation for me instead of just for himself. He gave me a prayer book not long after he told me all that. There's a fine line between telling someone how you found peace so maybe they can apply it and see if it works, and telling them how they should do things so that they can find peace, and saying it as though it's the only way to go about it. People are different, we find our happiness in different ways, and as it turns out, daily mass didn't work for me. Rosaries didn't work for me. Church didn't work for me. And the Pieta prayer book definitely didn't work for me.. I gave it to an old lady I met at a nursing home I worked at, and she absolutely loved it and told me so every time I saw her.. seeing the joy in her eyes made me happier than all the mass and books and church in the world could've ever made me. If I could always do things for people just to see that joy, I would live my life to the fullest and die happy. I don't mean to sound vain, but if you were to judge me solely by that quality and by my slowly developing agnosticism, how could you say I'm going to hell simply because I don't have the blind faith that Christians have? It's all so flawed.
I used to have this screwed up logic that God controlled everything in my life. Literally, everything. I thought that when I got more hours at work, it was because I had prayed for it. Not because I was smart enough to call work and tell them I was looking for a another job since I wasn't getting enough hours, which in turn made them give me more hours. And then I felt like I had to be on my best behavior, because if I did anything wrong, if I defied God in any way, he might just take away those hours. I honestly believed that. And when I started straying from the "rules", like I always do, I started getting worried. Every single time I thought I got something from God, I thought I had to be good to keep it. And every single time, I went back to how I've always been, flawed and human, because that's who I am. And a lot of times I did lose what I had. But of course it wasn't God taking it away. It was the natural process of life.. You gain, you lose. At one point, I was so mindfucked and confused because God has supposedly given me everything I could've asked for.. fulltime hours at work, an amazing boyfriend, and an overall sense of joy and peace within myself. And just like that, my patient died, my boyfriend ended up being a needy, clingy idiot who couldn't survive without a relationship and had no original thoughts, and the fact that I had lapsed in my medication for a few months came back full swing and I had a severe melt down, complete with serious suicidal thoughts and everything. I didn't understand why God took it all away, because I was so happy. It took me damn near forever to realize that 1. I don't need to have stuff to be happy. 2. God didn't give me that stuff to begin with. 3. He didn't take it away. It just happened. There wasn't some deep meaning or reason behind it. It just happened.
Jeez. I think back to all the delusions I've held in the past and it almost makes me sick. And I think back to all the times I've been told something was wrong and I believed it before forming my own opinion. And then I went out and argued against it. The times I argued with atheists, the stupid arguments I used, the ones they make fun of. The time I felt sad and sickened when my friend decided he believed in Materialism, hoped he would find the church again, wondered how he could fall away from something he had once loved so deeply. Faulted him for it. Still cared about him, but faulted him. If religion can do that to someone, brainwash them.. I want nothing to do with it.
"I have no need for religion, I have a conscience."
-Anonymous