Dear Brother,

I am seriously contemplating leaving the Church. I can't believe I am actually sitting here writing this. After coming back into the Church five years ago, I can't believe I am writing to you about how I want to leave it. I read your reply to a Gabriel to stop whining and start praying for the Church instead of criticizing it. Maybe you'll say the same thing to me- I'm scared you will.

I want to leave the Church because the God I believed in does not exist. He was a product of my mental illness. When I found out that my beliefs were delusions, I was shattered. I still am shattered. The God I thought loved me like the apple of His eye was a lie. I never had hallucinations or heard voices, which made finding out that the experiences I had were never real all the harder. It was a more insidious deception.

I came into the Church from an experience that I had. It was my road to Damascus moment, so to speak. I began to take a good look at myself and the way I had been living. Following this inner voice, I went to confession on Divine Mercy Sunday for the first time in years, I acquired a spiritual director and began doing penance for my sins. I didn't know I was beginning a descent into madness.

I began to think God was calling me to be a victim soul, a thought which terrified me, but because I wanted to please Him, I said 'yes'. What I thought I was being called was to be a victim soul for mental illness. I would offer up to God all the suffering and terrible mental pain- the anxiety, profound depression, the agoraphobia and the shyness, my learning disability and all the common irritations of daily life.

I first began to notice something was off when I began to experience a severe temptation towards one of the parish priests. I fell in love with him. Every day for three years I cried, prayed, fasted, said novenas, took holy water, wore a penance belt, confessed, drank Lourdes water, begged Mary to help me, begged all the saints to help me, begged all the angels to help me with this terrible temptation. Even worse, I thought the priest was struggling with the same temptation as myself. He was not. I had kept feeling this inner voice telling me that we were united in this pain, that we were both to offer up this suffering to God. I had these imaginative or intellectual visions where this priest and I figured into the larger role of the groanings and lamentations of the Church.

My first smack of reality came when I contacted this priest after he had left the parish and asked him to truly tell me how he had felt about me. You can imagine his reply to such a query! It was decidedly in the negative, and he thought I was bipolar on top of everything else. Perhaps I am- not one psychologist has owned up on what they think is wrong with me. I am only diagnosed as having depression and generalized anxiety disorder.

The second slap of reality to the face happened to me when an experience I had did not come true. I was "told" when I was going to die. I know what that sounds like, but the experience itself was filled with such love as I have never experienced before. I never, ever would have believed someone could have loved me as much as God made me feel at that moment. There was such profound peace and joy I thought I would die right then of it.

I said to God on that day that I wished to die utterly impoverished, friendless and suffer tremendous pain, because I felt that such a death would be nothing compared to the love I was in for when I passed away. I wanted to give Him something back for His love. As you can see, I am still alive. WHen the time came and passed, that day I awoke and completely lost the will to live. I would have sworn with St. Teresa of Avila that the vision I had experienced was REAL, and if it wasn't, I wished to die. Well, I am proof that one cannot die of a broken heart.

It's been well over a year since the day the I lost the will to live, and I've struggled with suicide since then. I had barely been holding on when God was with me, when I thought I was a victim soul for mental illness- but now that the ground has caved in beneath me...what reason do I have to go on?

It made me think of all the times when I was not able to "conjure" up (or whatever the heck I was doing in my pathetic brain) delusions of happiness and love of God. When I cried and pleaded for seven years of jr and high school for GOd to help me in my depression; when I was left without a director or anyone to help me cope with these visions; when my husband grabbed me by the neck and threw me against the wall and shoved my face in the carpet; when the very few friends I had left me because I became so catholic; when my child was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and the nuns at the school blamed us for being bad parents- for the temptation of loving a priest and standing there silent while I cried and begged and pleaded with Him to just get rid of those feelings. He wasn't there for any of those things...not once did He help me by the kindness of strangers or comfort. I'm crying as I write this because there is so much pain. Why did He have to break my heart...why?He promised He loved me... but He let me become insane as He drew me into this Church. Why stay in the Church when it was delusions that brought me to it in the first place? I would have done anything for the God that I thought I had found, because that God loved ME like nobody ever has or ever could. ME- stupid, shy, fumbling, worthless old me.

And I'm so ANGRY....I'm so angry.....why couldn't He have been real? WHY? Why did He do this to me? I know I should man up and take the suffering, but Brother- I am no saint. I cannot even pretend I want to shoulder those spiritual burdens. I cannot live like this, and that is why I think of suicide.