An Attempt to Make Sense of Things

Initially when I first got this blog I wasn’t fully sure what I wanted to do with it. After fits and starts, it seemed like there wasn’t anything I fully wanted to keep posting about. I like many different things, and I like to write (mostly fiction), yet nothing kept me coming back. My last post was some drivel about politics over 7 months ago, and since then I’ve had many life changes.

Aside from being unable to find work where I lived and moving back with my family that I hadn’t seen often in many years, the biggest change in my life has been my final admission that I don’t believe in the Christian faith anymore. To be sure, I hadn’t recognized that I had become an atheist for quite some time despite the fact my beliefs inexorably pushed me towards that admission. It wasn’t some earth-shaking revelation; it most certainly didn’t happen one morning. Rather, it took me mildly pointing out to a family member that I didn’t “share her faith anymore.” At thirty-two I no longer have a belief in what a friend of mine calls “an invisible sky wizard.”

Since that time, I sort of cocooned myself away from thinking about it. Months passed, my mental health and well-being suffered, and eventually I had the serendipity to re-visit a blog I mistakenly followed when I started this one. Reading it made me realize that I had not fully explored my new belief structure, as if I had awoken from a terrible nightmare and could not fathom the dawn of a new point in my life. More importantly, I recognized that I need to actually put into words what de-conversion means to me so I can organize my thoughts and regain my sense of self. Other atheists in my situation have suffered trauma, did not have a support group, and had difficulties “coming out” to the people around them.

I live in the South, and I think that has also added to my misanthropy about sloughing off my irrational faith and embracing a rational view of the natural world. It can’t be stressed enough that this particular region of the United States is very socially embattled against non believers. Because of this and other circumstances, I have only told one atheist friend that I do not believe in God. Keeping this most essential truth about myself to myself assuredly has not done me any favors for my sense of well-being.

At least with putting this out here on the Internet, I now feel like I’ve told someone else. It’s a little terrifying that someone I know might read it, but I think it’s an essential step to becoming the person I want to be.