Thats right, it is an act of expressing to God how sad you are about your sins followed by your promises to Him to make things right with Him again by going to confession and doing penance which you ask Him to help you to do.
I would like to do something so this helps.
I understand I can’t make things right by my own efforts and this wouldn’t make this right in and of itself either… I just feel bad knowing I’ve done something wrong and want to do something about it and I felt stuck without being able to take the route most Catholics can follow (confession/communion). Its a bit hard to finally learn and believe about the seriousness of sin… and then learn the only way you can deal with it is a process currently closed to you. (Now that I’m not overcome with worry about it, that’s actually kind of a funny. ) However, this is good… this is something I can do over the next year while waiting for baptism without getting overwhelmed by guilt. Like your earlier posts, this is very helpful and relevant to me specifically. The prayer you reference earlier, the ‘Spiritual Communion,’ one, was a great suggestion too.