TL;DR: Atheism saved my life.
It was this morning that I realized that I have never really shared the story of how I came to believe what I believe. I grew up in a VERY Bible-following Christian family, and attended church with them every Sunday. I was always fascinated with the idea of a god being there for me, but I was also skeptical.
I never did experience that “feeling” you were supposed to feel during worship. My friends at church all talked about it, and I could never relate, though I pretended to. As much as I prayed, worshipped, devoted myself to scripture, I never could “hear” or “feel” god. Oh, and boy, did I devote myself! I memorized those verses and read that book multiple times as a child, something my peers hadn’t even done. I prayed night and day. I tried so hard. I even begged my mom to let me get baptized when I was nine years old after finding out, in depth, what hell was. I was terrified.
When I was about eleven, my family started attending a new baptist church, and at first it was amazing. I loved everyone there, I made a lot of new friends, I was excited to go every Sunday and Wednesday, less for the god aspect and more for the social scene, as my siblings and I were homeschooled for a time.
Problems always arise when one fully realizes their sexuality. It was that same first week at that new church that I came to terms with the fact that I had a huge crush on one of my friends, who was female. This was before I knew what that “man shall not lie with man” verse meant. Hell, at the time, I didn’t actually know what sex was. All I knew was that I liked her, and wanted to hold her hand, and maybe kiss her.
I, being shy about any sort of romantics, never made a move, not once. A couple of years went by before I found out what that verse meant, and what the word “gay” meant. I was horribly ashamed of myself. For a while, I even hated myself for ever developing feelings like that for someone who wasn’t a boy.
So, as a young, terrified, confused teenager with very low self esteem, I started using box cutters for a different purpose. My arms and legs were littered with cuts. My youth pastor must have spotted a cut under my long sleeve one day, and instead of confronting me, went straight to the church’s circle of leaders, who eventually talked to my mother.
Like that, everything changed. Parents of my friends started looking at me like I was diseased, and some even decided to try their hardest to keep their children away from me. I didn’t understand until my mom confronted me.
When I didn’t stop cutting, my mom threatened multiple times to throw me in one of those glorified looney bins. She didn’t take me to counseling. To be fair, I don’t think she understood what self harm truly was. It was a whole new concept to her, none of her children before me had suffered from it. I don’t blame her for that. I would have been scared had I been in her position, too.
Despite how I was treated by my elders at the church, who were supposed to be there to guide me, but instead alienated me, we as a family continued to go for a little bit. It was shortly before we left that an older woman in our church had come out as gay, and the church began to gossip about her, bully her, and alienate her to the point where she was too uncomfortable to continue attending. This made me ecstatic whenever my family decided it was the best decision to leave that church altogether.
A couple of years later, I was 15. I didn’t stop self harming, and had picked up smoking cigarettes, as well as heavily dabbling in drugs and drinking a year prior. My dad quickly realized that I might have depression, and took me to a counselor. Sure enough, I was diagnosed and put on medication, which has slowly but surely helped me to this day. I didn’t stay in counseling for long, as my amazing therapist was retiring, but while I was in, I felt listened to for the first time in a while.
I continued to go to church, despite cringing through many verses of the Bible that were anti-women or anti-gay. I would question the verses that would state that a woman must be sold to her rapist. When I asked my pastor about them, he would say “Well, it was a different time in the old testament.” To which I would reply “But if god is all-knowing, wouldn’t he know that regardless of the time, selling a woman to her rapist isn’t right?” Not a single pastor ever had a solid answer for me. I wanted to believe so badly, and I wanted to feel god with all my heart. But I just didn’t.
After a while, I stopped going to church because these questions of mine had made more than a few of my pastors uncomfortable, and they would usually try to dodge me. So I gave up. But I didn’t stop trying to believe in god. I had to, or I would go to hell. That was my whole drive. My mom used to say “If atheists are right, then whatever, we all die. But if they’re wrong, at least we get into heaven.” It wasn’t until years later that I realized that was no reason to devote your entire life to something that may or may not exist.
When I married my husband, who is an atheist, I was still hanging on to the last shred of belief I had for a god. He respected that I believed, but he was curious, and would ask me questions like “why do you believe?” He made me realize that I never could give him a solid answer for that other than “I’m afraid of hell” or “I want to believe that my loved ones are in heaven.”
That clicked for me. I wanted to, but I didn’t. I was a solid straight A student in school, and my science books never held any proof or concrete evidence of a god. I was always told to “have faith,” but never told to open my mind.
To this day, many of my family members still believe that I just call myself bisexual to be edgy. Ever since I came out to them years ago, they either ignore the fact completely, or, as one of them does, they say “stop” whenever I comment on how pretty a woman looks. She never said “stop” to my brothers. But I always needed someone to talk to about it, so I was lucky I had the friends I did at the time. They were very supportive.
Just like my sexuality, much of my family believes I’m using atheism to rebel once more. My mom told me once, while we were having a beer and shooting pool, that she “didn’t teach me to be atheist,” and “I don’t know where you and your brother got this atheism thing from.” To which I replied, “you didn’t influence anything. I informed myself and made my decision.” She didn’t have a reply.
Growing up, I was always made to believe that atheists were evil people who were hopeless and sad all the time. My mom also believes that, and even tried once to blame my 15 year battle with depression on my beliefs. When I pointed out that I haven’t self harmed once since I came to terms with myself, and that I first developed depression when I was a Christian, AND that before every suicide attempt, I prayed to god to forgive me beforehand, she went silent.
To be clear, my mom, and possibly other family members, are very wrong about me. I have seriously never been happier in my entire life. I’ve grown so much, and I’m proud of how strong I truly am. My self esteem has never been healthier, and that came straight from the mouth of my current therapist. I finally found my strength and became a good person, all without a god.
Now I’m not trying to shame any religion. Since religious people commonly give testimonies, I figured I’d give mine as well: Coming to terms with my beliefs truly saved my life.
