It started when I was a teenager. Once I hit high school, religion became much more than just something that was spoon-fed to me throughout my childhood. It was something that I knew was real and important; I just didn’t know everything about Catholicism, and since I didn’t go to Church, I didn’t feel the invisible force of God telling me that I had to believe certain things or that I had to view certain subjects the same way other Catholics did.

Then, suddenly, a month before the start of my senior year, I met the man that would become my first boyfriend. I have no idea where I’d be spiritually if it weren’t for him. He brought me back to the God that I had been running from my whole life. I started attending mass, youth group, religious education, and all the extra skits and events that he and his family had going on in our town’s parish. I even joined the Sunday choir. I was with a good guy who treated me right and I was throwing myself into a relationship with God, as if it were a natural ability.

Fast forward to my transfer to my university. This man and I have long been broken up and are no longer on speaking terms. I struggled immensely with Catholicism and religion in general. I hadn’t given up completely, but I did take a long break from it.

I decided one day that I’d check out the Catholic ministry on campus. I was incredibly nervous; it had been so long since I’d been to a Catholic Church and I didn’t know anyone. I had no idea how this ministry operated. I opened the door, sat down at a table, and took out a notebook and pen, as that is my natural instinct as a writer to do whenever I sit down literally anywhere. I was expecting to not be approached by a lot of people, but almost immediately, someone walked up to me, introduced himself, and helped me through the divine chaplet. After we left the chapel, the youth minister, one of the nuns, and a few of the girls welcomed me immediately with open arms.

Only a few weeks into my time at the Catholic center had I made the decision to go through RCIA. If none of you know what RCIA is, it’s basically the process that someone goes through to be recognized as Catholic by the Catholic Church, and it gives you the ability to receive the Eucharist.

I was loving RCIA. I participated multiple times almost every day and asked questions that my current boyfriend had about the religion so I could give him answers in future discussions. Half-way through this process, I dropped out. It was, on the surface, a painless process. The facilitators of the program didn’t try to coerce me into staying and assured me that I was always welcome to stay in the lessons to learn more, even though I wouldn’t be going through the rites of passage that the other students were.

The deeper I got into RCIA lessons, the more I realized that there was a lot of information that was hard to swallow. This is not to say that I dropped out so that I could be “worldly” or “willfully ignorant”, but I did know that I was not going to just up and agree with every single teaching of the church in under six months. Becoming a Catholic is a huge deal; if it weren’t, you wouldn’t have to go through two years of lessons and three ceremonies before finally being able to receive the Eucharist and be recognized by the church. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

Did my ex bring me back to God? Sure. He got me that far. But I wasn’t made uncomfortable by Catholicism. I wasn’t confronted with my unholiness. I wasn’t consistently challenged to better myself, and as a result, I got the feel-good aspect of involvement in religion without actually reforming what a crappy person I was. This is no fault of my ex’s, as he is not responsible for shaping me. That is something I was supposed to do myself, and I didn’t.

I only felt like being Catholic was “the right thing for me” when I was with people who made me feel good about Catholicism. It was never something I actively tried to do myself. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to make up for lost time actually being a Catholic come Easter Vigil, so I did what I knew I had to do. I dropped out of the RCIA process.

There are still things I struggle with when it comes to the Church. I still have a lot to pray over and I still have to make the effort to build a better relationship with God. Maybe in time, He’ll tell me that Catholicism was the right thing to do all along and I should go back to RCIA. Or maybe I’m being pulled in a different direction.

Either way, I leave RCIA with no hard feelings. I have nothing but respect for the Church and I would love to be Catholic one day, if that’s really, truly, the best path for me. I’m not going to get there in a six-month period, and that’s okay.