It just seems easy to either be in or out of grace. I just hate thinking about my past cause its so bad I’ve changed and don’t want to miss out on eternity with God. I realize all the mistakes and I’m trying my hardest to correct them all. But the more I think about what I need to confess, the more mortal sin I find from the past. I know the sins, but not number of times. And it all seems to haunt me.
We’ve all made a lot of mistakes. I personally had a time where I was very far from God. I did go through the motions, but I regularly sinned without thinking much about it. One day I decided to become the best Catholic I can be.
The first step was confession. For a normal confession you might do a 30 minute examination of conscience, but I ended up spending about a couple months thinking about it. I basically wrote down my whole life story up to that point. I broke it into sections by education (elementary school, high school, etc.) and then work (first job, second job, etc.). There were a lot of memories I had forgotten until I got to those points in the life story.
By the end of it I had 16 unique sins. Some were only one-time things, others were repeated many times, some even mortal sins. I wrote this all down on a small piece of paper and kept it in my wallet until confession. After confession, I shredded it by hand into tiny little pieces. Some people burn it instead to be totally sure no one can read it.
So I suggest you think about your life in detail and write down any sin you remember. Once you have the list, you can think about each one, whether it was mortal or venial, how often it was. You might not be able to give an exact count, but maybe something like once a month or once a day. Once the details are worked out, take the paper to confession. After confession if you have any memories of sin, you can go back to confession once a week until you can’t remember anymore sins.
Remember, as long as it wasn’t done on purpose, your forgotten sins are already forgiven. You should mention forgotten mortal sins at future confessions, but they are already forgiven. You are in a state of grace and can enjoy all the blessings that entails.
That is why Jesus died for us.