Confitērī

My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against You, whom I should love above all things. I firmly plan, with Your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us. In His name, my God, have mercy. Amen

con·fess

VERB 

1. To disclose (something damaging or inconvenient to oneself); admit.
   1. To make known (one's sins) to God or to a priest.
   2. To hear the confession of (a penitent).
2. To acknowledge belief or faith in; profess.

 ~~~

I'll be baptized soon and then comes confession: the one thing I scoffed at most before having a real look at the faith.  I called it voyeuristic once if I'm remembering correctly.

Now it looms ahead of me, intimidating.
There's something about assessing your whole life, finding everything you did wrong, and telling someone - whom you don't know very well - about all of it.  It's terrifying, but not for the reasons you'd expect.
Having come to this juncture in my young-adult life without the Catholic Church, I've done plenty of things that are less than pleasant to admit.  These things, while not terrible, are things that I will probably have problems with saying. Aloud. To my parish priest.  It's nerve-racking for the simple reason that I fear judgement of others.  Particularly others whom I respect and look up to.  In this situation the fear is perhaps unfounded, but it sits at the back of my mind poking me, with an overly smug look on it's ugly face.  It's hard to ignore sometimes.
There is a lesson in the Catechism that eased my apprehension a little when we went over it in class, but it seems that was temporary.

I suppose the largest factor in it is the unknown: I've never done this before.  I can't help but wonder what it'll be like, how awkward it will be, what I'm supposed to say.
Wait, what am I supposed to say?
I didn't know, so I googled it (using Bing now, I like it better).  This is what I came up with (it's a .pdf file, fair warning).  I have that saved in my bookmarks so I can come back to it.
I'll be memorizing the Act of Contrition, but I'm terrible at memorizing things, so who knows if I'll remember it when I actually need to use it.  Eventually it will stick in my mind, though, so I'm not terribly worried.

Then comes the part where I have to tell someone who is not my significant other everything I've done wrong.  Well, not every single, little thing, but a lot of things.  Before I got here I held the belief that my sins were between God and I.  Why can't God just forgive them if I apologize directly?
I understand now that just looking up to the heavens and whispering "I'm sorry" (or any form of those words) is not enough.  To go and tell your greatest faults to a priest is a kind of penance in it's own way.  Not only that, but it is an action that shows exactly how committed to being penitent you really are.  By just saying "I'm sorry" to God yourself, you're not proving you really care that your actions could hurt your relationship with Him.  You need that extra step.  The apology is more genuine this way.
It also gives you a chance to really reflect on what changes you need to make.

In all, confession is a beautiful act and should be done on a regular basis.
That doesn't change the fact that it's hard.

Nor does it change the fact that I'm scared of it.