Greed and Guilt 

I talked to my mother a few weeks ago about all this guilt I have been having,
saying that I must have been a catholic in a past life with how hard I am on myself. 
She laughed and said no, it wasn’t catholicism, 
it’s just the Southern Baptist guilt that she passed down to me. 
My family isn’t very religious–my dad believes in reincarnation but only a little, and my mother,
you guessed it,
grew up Southern Baptist.
(Before my grandmother passed away, she participated in both a Baptist and Methodist church in Tennessee, and would go on trips with either church depending on which had the better alcohol. Guess which one she went to more often?)

Greed,
as you know, 
is one of the seven deadly sins.
Its counterpart, from the 
“seven righteous virtues,”
is Charity.

I never went to sunday school, but I went to wednesday night youth group, and that was enough.
I really only went, not because my parents forced me to (on the contrary, my family forbade me from going when my grades were too poor), no, I went because I needed connection and closeness in middle school and I hadn’t discovered community theater yet.
But I think I think that’s where my greed, and guilt of the greed, started.

[but what is greed, really? was i being greedy and selfish when I couldn’t go to youth group because I had too much homework? Was I being selfish when I put myself first and decided to stop going because I felt alienated by the church’s homophobic rhetoric?]

I always thought that “loving yourself” was vain,
that you had to “earn” treating yourself, earn being nice to yourself, earn and deserve love by working for it. 
Was this mentality brought on by my time at the “non-denominational” bay area church? Or from Southern Baptist guilt passed down through many generations of women, or at least from my mother to me?

My mother wanted me to have my own choice in religion,
probably because she didn’t want me to carry that 
Southern Baptist Guilt
that she carries
So she never forced me to go to church, only requesting we go on easter.
Just easter.

I feel guilty for wanting things. It feels wrong. To want is greed, right?
If I want something, that makes me greedy and selfish, right? And the specifics of the things I want, that just makes me shallow, right?

I’m hard on myself because if I’m not, then someone else will be and that will break my heart more. 
I’m hard on myself because I feel like I have to EARN being nice to myself.
I’m hard on myself because it’s payment for the greed I have for wanting things. 
I’m hard on myself because
it’s all that I know.