When i was 12 i started practicing catholicism, within a year i did baptism, confession and communion and i started teaching in sunday school. As i grew, i started to feel disappointed with the church, i disliked (and still do) proselytizing foreign and tribal cultures as i felt it kills them by forbidding rituals because they consider barbaric when in most cases it had practical utilities and banning them puts the lives of these people on peril. the charges of pedophilia within the church shocked me and the action and position of the church through history just let me thinking if it could happen again. I also started to feel mad at myself as i felt as a hypocrite because i only search god when i needed it, i didn't pray as much as i should and felt bad because of it.
When i was 17, i had already come to the conclusion that prayer doesn't work and i can actually achieve more by doing something. Wanting a change in me and my life, I decided that first i needed to know myself, so i started researching about personality and personality tests, several times i found about psychology and hypnotism; i was passionated about both and was finally beginning to feel that i found myself and left all of my issues behind or so i wanted to believe. Even though, by this time, i thought god to be either a selfish been or non-existent i still held onto my religion. It was in a youth seminar that i realized that my issues persisted and it was there when i realized that these people were trying to hypnotize me and control my mind by telling me all my issues and giving them an imaginary solution: religion and god. After that i abandoned all respect that i had left in that religion, but still believed somewhat in a selfish god. And now more than ever i wanted answers, why so many people follows religion? What's the difference between me and those people? My first answer was very subjective and simple, i realized that people needed love and acceptance and many turn to church and to god looking for that, i realized that when my crush told me that she loved me and an almost 10 year long depression disappear in a few days (I'm bragging a little :) ).
Soon afterwards i started college and i started to question everything, my view of life, my ethics, what worked and what not as i was very conservative and repressed about many issues in life and i finally had the opportunity to think for myself and fork myself in a way that my actions are accurate with what seems to work in reality. I started watching the scientific and atheist community on youtube. And after two years, i took leap towards atheism. I conclude by saying that i feel happy, more than i have ever felt as a believer, i am satisfied with and about my life. I am an atheist.
