I had drafted this a few months back:

It's been 1.5 years now since the moment the concept of the Christian god no longer made sense to me. 

It wasn't like I chose for this to happen. There was something deeper that changed, where my inner logic snapped out of the Christian mindset and started nodding along with the agnostics, atheists, the non-religious. 

The problem is that I had deep dark voids within myself that religion used to fill.

Lack the love, compassion, and attention of an earthly father? Well, don't worry - your heavenly father loves you eternally. 

Spent nights alone enduring arguments and occasional physical abuse in an unhealthy home environment? Don't worry - imaginary saints, angels, god are all there with you carrying you even when you can't see them. 

I was taught to seek external validation constantly. I was taught to do everything perfectly out of fear for if my mother was in a bad mood, she would lash out at me. So don't do anything that could possibly upset mother. 

And yet sometimes the abuse would come without doing anything wrong at all. For being a kid. 

I've clung to imaginary religious figures my entire life, through depressing, lonely nights  in my youth. Through breakdowns in the shower so nobody to could hear the sobs through the water. There were voids, hate for myself, all that religion just "miraculously" filled. 

But now that religion is gone, and the voids have returned. So what do you do? By default you fill them with whatever closes good thing you have. In my case, it's my relationship. 

But the obsessive dependency religion slowly trains you to have is not healthy. Why is it we have this weird acceptance in society that being obsessively dependent on religion is OK but not otherwise, such as in a romantic relationship? 

It should never be OK. 

So now I'm left with those voids and trying to figure out how you're supposed to fill them in a healthy way. 

I also don't how to define a life purpose now, what should motivate me to want to wake up everyday because deep down I don't have a reason right now. 

It's challenging when hardship comes. When I consider my life, it seems more negative than positive, with a few shining lights along the way. 

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Now adding from present-day, I feel alone. I've moved away from family/friends for work. My boyfriend and I - both atheists - have trouble meeting people like ourselves. Though we consider ourselves outliers of common society. 

Sometimes while driving on the interstate, I just get this urge to keep driving. Where, I don't know. My aunts and uncles, grandparents, are all getting older. I'm watching my parents age, watch them struggle in poverty and emotional chaos, the chaos that once chained me for so long. 

I'm watching my dad suffer from depression, from lack of social skills. He says he doesn't want to wake up. My mother looks to me like I'm her mentor. I'm only 24. How backwards this life seems to be. 

I seem to be one of the strong few who can pull it all together in times of doubt. But as I get older, and these difficult situations arise, and now that I don't have god... I don't know if I can do it. 

My brother is 9 years my senior, and yet he's not ready to deal with the emotional damage from our childhood. I guess that makes me the wiser one here. The rock for everyone else. I'm playing the role of project manager in helping my dad get help, helping my mom get her life together. Only because she's finally ready to help herself. 

But deep down some days I just feel empty inside, lacking motivation to do anything I used to dream of doing. The music within me feels like it's dying out, and I'm not sure how to get it back. 

Religion used to be my steady ground. But without it now, I feel like I'm over a deep, depressing abyss that is always under my feet, just every once in a while hidden by the pale glow of fading sunlight. 

Thank you, false hope and ignorant religion, for adding to my list of disappointments. 

-B.