Crying at the feet of the cross

A few years ago, I found out that every single mall of a particular chain in my country has a built-in oratory. I believe it’s because the founder was an Opus-Dei (an obscure and very influential faction of Catholicism in Chile), and they are required to pray at certain hours. I’ve never verified if this is the actual reason, so take it with a grain of salt.

This knowledge became useful when I was in the depths of depression, going to see my psychiatrist once a week. Every session was the equivalent of interacting with a human vending machine, where I’d put in way too much money, and he’d give me pills. At first, I was grateful for the practicality of the transaction, but after a while, as got worse, my voice would sometimes break as I told him how I was still terrified and went to bed every night hoping I wouldn’t wake up the next day, I started to resent his coldness.

So, every session, I’d walk into his office, list everything that made me want to die that week, get my prescription, go to the pharmacy, swipe my card, grab my pills, and walk to the oratory. It was always empty, so I’d sit, cry for a few minutes, then write a letter to God asking to get better.

I wasn’t sure if I was a catholic anymore, but I’d sometimes pray, and sometimes thank God on the rare occasion I had a good day. I would have converted to any religion, pray to any God, confess to every single misdeed if it meant I got better. So maybe my return to Catholicism would begin as purely transactional, but if the light of Jesus Christ would turn me into a well-adjusted, contributing member of society, I’d become the most devoted catholic the world had ever seen.

If salvation couldn’t come to me in the form of Ambien and Lexapro, maybe faith was the way to go.