My life as an Atheist

I haven't been honest with you all.


I'm an atheist. Yep. Twelve years and going. But I wager I was an atheist as early as fourteen with some speculation starting around eleven. But I'll give a history lesson leading up to those moments.

When I was a kid, my mother shoved the god nonsense down my throat like all parents who fear a god do. She wasn't a hardcore fundamentalist or evangelical but we'd go to church if she felt the need to. Frankly, I didn't care for it. It was boring, it was tedious and it wasn't anything special. She's not a christian but believed in a god. I was curious as to why someone would believe in god, the christian god to be exact and not be a christian. Years down the line as a young adult I would learn deism, the belief in god but without any affiliation to a religious group.

My grandmother also pushed for church, like all black grandmothers do. I'll get to the black segment in a moment, gotta build up the anticipation. If it wasn't my mother, it was my grandmother. My dad did not give a damn about church. I noticed that a lot of men didn't care for church but may have some spirituality overall. As of now in this date of 6/27/20, I have no spirituality or religious beliefs whatsoever and I'm proud of it.

Now, as any child would, you'd ask about why god exists and how he could be everywhere at once. I asked is that guy or woman being followed by god and my mother said yes blindly without any logical explanation as to why he was following those two people and all of us at the same time. One of my worst memories was actually during and after church. The night before, me and my brother had everyone come over for the night, two good friends and our cousin. Fun all around. It was Easter Sunday that following morning and someone brought a bag of Starburst jelly beans.

Now I hated jellybeans, but for some reason, I ate these. Why? I don't know. But I did.

The next morning, my stomach was acting up. But instead of sleeping it off, I had to go to church and pray my stomachache away.

As soon as service got out, I went to the curb and threw up all those jellybeans. So much for god's healing power. I had an angry look that whole day. Mad at mom for taking me to church, mad at god for not saving me and mad at myself for eating jellybeans and the stuff atop the next morning. When we took pictures, I had a distinct glare in each picture. I went home and rested and got dragged along with grandma to our cousin's apartment and I threw up again.

After that and a nap later I got better. Plus, I had spring vacation to look forward to. All was well.

I won't say that this particular experience made me an atheist, but it turned me off jellybeans forever.

Fast forward to 2003, I was eleven years old and at that moment in time, I was starting to discover things about my body. And you can put two and two together. I swore to god that I was gonna not do my business until I was sixteen. I didn't last a week. That fear of breaking my oath to the sky daddy lingered...until I forgot about it and then remembered it offhand years later and laughed at my own ignorance.

"When you grow up, you'll learn to laugh at your fears." - Piccolo, Dragon Ball Z Episode 7

This applied to a lot of things in my childhood and adolescence. One of those things was the existence of god and the belief of one. Around my peers in middle and high school I would hear various things like "Wearing a black shirt with a cross necklace is a sin". So what? If you wanna wear black and a cross necklace, so be it. My classmate didn't buy it either because he did it again despite the music teacher saying these things.

One day, the science class caught on fire and the entire middle school had to be evacuated and moved to you guessed it - a church. I was talking and cursing up a storm and people were saying cursing in church was a sin. So the fuck what? I didn't say that, but later I thought to myself, so the fuck what? This is a sin, that's a sin, you can't do this on certain days, etc.

Eating shellfish is seen as unclean, fasting from meat on fridays but fish is okay apparently. See the logic? This is spread among Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Catholicism and other beliefs that the Middle East and America declare war over. While there are reasons to not eat animals and fish, valid reasons at that, I think some of those reasons are a bit too much. I ate what I ate and that was it. I don't eat pork, but not for religious or moral reasons, there are better meats to consume, but I will eat it if it's served by someone else.

But back on topic, my beliefs in religion were questioned and tried many times and a lot of that has to attribute to the stuff I watched. The countless nights of watching cable TV and a lot of other things that kids shouldn't be watching or seeing shaped my mind albeit in a dormant manner. When I would return to those same things years later, it not only clicked with me more, I understood them a lot better.

At fourteen, on a fucking Friday night, my brother had the brilliant idea to bring me to a church when I had plenty of games to play and internet sites to browse. We were there for an hour and I hated it. Hated it. I was an introvert and didn't go out much so maybe that was my mother trying to break me out of that. That wasn't the way to do it.

Fifteen, I questioned religion again when I detested going to church one Sunday. She told me that my dead grandmother taught her to teach me the christian way, which means she was a christian...but not really, going back to deism. Another thing I noticed when we were walking to church was a woman going to the same church but wearing a very provocative miniskirt. And her shape was indeed something that got me sprung. Now I made a little scenario that the preacher would try to fool around with her, basing it off the various sitcoms where the black preacher was pulling women or seeking sex in the name of god.

Hoo boy, at fifteen I was calling out the corruption and adultery in the black church subconsciously before I discovered it as an adult. I can't make this up. This woman had two sons my age if not a little younger and she was wearing this with her husband no less. Who goes to church wearing something like this:

Image courtesy of Romprom

Not this exact dress, but the length of the dress mainly. Now imagine that with a woman with say, Cherokee D'ass's shape. To quote a preacher in his moment of hysteria, good god!

End quote.

As I stated, I was questioning religion and god at an early age. The next year, I would move to Savannah, Georgia and it was there where I would not only come face to face with religion tenfold, but also make the ultimatum of where my beliefs system would lean toward...

Eight years of this hell I had to endure.