Faith S.
Photography by Ally Szabo
If you’re reading this, maybe it’s time.
For the longest time, I associated God with death. For every person I lost in my life, the only sense of comfort I felt I had was blaming God for their tragedy. For every person I lost in my life, I prayed to God so long and so hard to save them from their pain and misery, and to keep them alive and well, and even with that, I felt that He failed me. For every person I lost in my life, my faith in God began to diminish until it was completely gone in November 2021.
Catholicism has always played a large role in my identity. I grew up in a religious family, attended Catholic school for ten years, received all my sacraments, and my name, Faith, reflected my family’s Catholic values. I was taught to pray to God for protection, that all of my wishes would be granted by God, and that He was always listening. Yet, He kept ignoring me. He ignored 8-year-old me when my grandfather passed away after suffering for years from dementia. He ignored my cries for comfort when a friend of mine took his own life when I was 12 years old. He ignored my begging and pleading to free my uncle from cancer, and my uncle finally lost his battle with the horrible disease when I was 13. I finally got back at God and ignored HIM for good when I was 16 when I lost a close family friend and one of my biggest mentors in life. This death shook me the hardest – it sent me into a mental health spiral that I was so afraid of not making it out of. I was scared that I had lost myself completely.
I was always known for being a happy and positive kid, always smiling and laughing, always a joy to be around. Throughout my life and still to this day, I’ve struggled with anxiety, but I always felt that I have been able to manage it with the proper resources and outlets I have been blessed to have. I never thought I would hit rock bottom so hard and so quickly.
The winter of my junior year of high school was one of the last times I attended for almost two years. The smell of incense and the eerie quiet as the casket was brought into the church has been burned in my memory for the rest of my life. I couldn’t get myself to step into a church without thinking about that day.
I didn’t go to my classes, my grades were slipping, and my teachers and friends were so worried about me. I stopped doing the things I enjoyed for weeks. My appetite changed, I lost weight, and I wasn’t smiling. I was on a downward slope, and I couldn’t find a way back up. I never realized how bad it got until one day one of my teachers stopped me on my way to class, and he said something I would never forget: “You’re not you anymore. You’re not okay. You haven’t been yourself in weeks.” I was shocked. It was like a switch flipped in my head – I needed help and I needed support. It was time to make the change.
One night, my mind was racing so incredibly bad, that I couldn’t even shut my eyes without the funeral replaying in my mind, without my mom telling me “He died” in my mind, without seeing his family in my mind. My parents came into my room, telling me to pray like how I used to when I was 10 and couldn’t sleep. “Say a Hail Mary five times, maybe you can rest your mind,” my mom told me. So, I did – I was so desperate to help myself, to find relief, to just shut it off for one minute. And then I fell asleep.
I began doing this every night until I could fall asleep on my own. My mood began to change. I began to overcome the grief, I started to feel like myself again after almost two months of being so far gone. I began to heal, and I felt like I had found myself again. I was my usual happy, positive, joyous self. I was smiling and laughing every day, I was so lucky and blessed to be back. I began to search for God again, I stopped pushing Him away, and let Him back into my life. I realized He was one of the biggest outlets I was missing in my life, and I was so thankful to have found that sense of faith and spirituality again.
During my second week at Villanova, I went to church. My stomach still sank as I walked in, and this initial feeling is something that will never go away. That negative feeling was quickly replaced with warmth as I sat in the pew with my friends, and they told me everything was okay. I began going to Church on my own whenever I felt that I needed it when I began to feel my mind slip or my anxiety get bad while at school, and instead of feeling hatred and resentment, I found hope and comfort.
If you're reading this, maybe it’s time to make that change and find yourself. I am so thankful that I did, and it is something that will stick with me forever.
Faith S., Villanova University
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