It has struck me this week that I am using my counselling sessions as a kind of confessional. I have struggled with my Catholicism for years and have all but turned my back on it, finding fault with so many of the ‘rules’. Yet I find myself pouring my heart out to a complete stranger every week, as if I were confessing to a priest! There’s a big difference though, at the end of confession the priest absolves you of your sins, you get your penance and off you go to do it all over again, knowing you will be forgiven…if you go to confession! I don’t receive absolution from my counsellor, but my penance is to spend the whole week thinking about what we have discussed and try to understand how it all makes me act the way I do.

I have wondered if returning to my roots and traditional confession could help me. But why should I be forgiven for my sins by someone else? I know I am a good person deep down and whether I believe in heaven or hell is irrelevant. I am the one who has to forgive myself for my sins, I am the one who has to live with them even if I can’t forgive myself. God or no God, forgiveness or no forgiveness, it is I who must deal with all my crap and work out how to get through it all.