Accepting Atheism

My family of 6 (my parents, my older and younger sisters, my brother, and myself) was never one to go to church every Sunday. My dad was Protestant (and still is; he still tells me to say my prayers) and my mom Mormon at the time, though she is now an Atheist (with a few years of Agnostic in the middle).
I always knew I was an Atheist. Even when I was very young and had no idea that the word “Atheist” existed, I knew that I didn't really believe that God was real. The first memory I have of this was when I was 7, maybe 8, years old and I was in the bathtub. My parents were fighting, my dad was drunk (as per usual), and I was sitting in a bathtub, crying and praying.
I often cried while I prayed, partly because I really only went beyond “Thank you and Amen” when I was very upset but also because I prayed this prayer all the time and it was never answered. It went like this:
“Heavenly Father who art in Heaven, please let my dad stop drinking and my mom and dad stop fighting. Let my family be safe, and happy, and let everything be okay. Please God. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.”
Well, my dad didn't stop drinking. My dad drank himself right into prison when I was 9, almost 10 years old. He was sentenced to 15 years for a crime that I still can't talk about anyone, not even my very best friend. This was when I first expressed my distaste with the idea of God.
In my mind, if there was a God and he loved everyone, then everyone should be happy. I wasn't happy, and my family wasn't happy, so therefore there was no God. Not very sensible, I know, but I was 9. I had a pebble of doubt.
Some time after my Dad went to prison, my mom started dating again. After a trial run with Tim, she found Steve. Steve was an Atheist. When I first found out that he was an Atheist, and learned what that was, I thought he was a breath of fresh air. But after a while, he made me skeptical about not only him as a person, but about all other Atheists. He was mean, openly and directly, about religion. I am totally okay with speaking your mind, and having an issue with religion, but when it comes to saying it to someones face, there comes a time for tact and respect. He was also mean to us, but that's another story entirely.
After moving around A LOT, from state to state for quite a while, we settled down in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is where I was born and where my mom's family lives. It was the summer between my 7th and 8th grade year, so I was just barely 13 years old.
It was hard for me to make friends in Salt Lake because it was summertime so there was no school. Eventually, though, I did make a friend. She was a Mormon, and she was really funny and nice. I wanted other friends like her, so I started going to church with her on Sundays. I met lots of other girls our age. Around this time, my older sister's real dad (she is the only one with a different father), Eric, came back into her life and into mine and my younger siblings' as well. He used to take us to all kinds of fun things, but only after church, if we went with him.
He and my friends taught me about the Book of Mormon, and soon enough I had two missionaries coming to my house once a week to teach me so that I could get baptized. I was baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, along with my younger sister, when I was 12 years old. She was 9.
Eric always talked about how great church was, and how the absolute best part was after you prayed or said your testimony and you felt the Holy Spirit. He said that he always felt a warm feeling in his heart, and he said it was the Holy Spirit in him, guiding him and letting him know the church was true. I heard the same things from my friends. I thought, now that I'm baptized, if I keep going to church, maybe I'll feel it.
I hated church. I hated Seminary, sitting for three hours, first singing songs about how I was a “child of God” and then listening to old men harp on about how they “know this church is true”. I was not only bored, but I was frustrated, because I was going to church and I was praying and eating the bread and drinking the water and I still, STILL hadn't felt any warm feeling in my chest! I hadn't felt the Holy Spirit guiding me and letting me know this church was true. It was hard for me to believe that anyone felt this feeling! Maybe they were making it up. My pebble of doubt began to grow larger.
School had started by this time, and was half over when I decided to stop going to church. I didn't talk to anyone about it, I just politely declined Eric's invitations and ignored my friends when they knocked on my door, called my phone, and threw pebbles at my window – yes, pebbles at my window; those Mormons are nothing if not persistent.
Very shortly after I stopped going to Church, I met Jeff. We started hanging out, and when I asked him if he was Mormon, he said, “My parents are, and I was baptized Mormon, but I'm an Atheist.”
Whaaaaaaat?! My mind was effectively blown. Kids could be Atheists? I had no idea that you could be an Atheist if your parents were religious!
Jeff and I became as thick as thieves, and still are to this day. He showed me Marilyn Manson and taught me how to swear (and I fucking liked it), and we talked about religion often. We were 14 and didn't know what the hell we were talking about, but we know what we felt and that was enough.
I really strayed from the church then, and openly rebelled against it. In doing so, I lost quite a few friends, but gained better ones who wouldn't judge me for whether or not I chose to go to church. I still wasn't calling myself an Atheist, because I still believed all Atheists were ass holes, and also because I secretly envied people who felt that warm feeling. I stopped looking for it, but I still desperately wanted to feel it. I felt like there must have been something wrong with me if almost every person around me felt this wonderful feeling, and I couldn't feel it. I wanted to believe in something anything so that I could feel normal, and whole. When asked what religion I was, or how I felt about God, I said, “I don't know” and, more often, “I don't care”.
Eric died in 2004. He killed himself. Suicide is a Sin, and people who kill themselves aren't supposed to go to heaven, they're supposed to get a one way ticket to hell. I refused, absolutely refused to believe that Eric was going to Hell. Now I don't believe in Hell, but that just made me mad. Any God who could send Eric to Hell was cruel. He was a little strange, sure, and obviously a little sad, but he was not a bad man. In the years since, I have lost more people to suicide, and have the same feelings. I just can't bring myself to believe in a God that sends my friends to Hell.
I calmed down on rebellions then, and focused on family, and a few years passed and nothing happened, which was really nice. Until 2009, when my Uncle Steve, to whom I was very close, was diagnosed with cancer.
He had an extremely rare type of cancer, epithelioid sarcoma. Only 20-ish pople in the last 20 years have had it, and nobody has survived it. My uncle included. After a long, terribly hard fight that lasted for two years, my uncle passed away. I had helped my aunt take care of him during his last few months, living with them and spending 8 hours a day alone with my uncle while my aunt worked. His death was extremely hard on me and my whole family. There was a nurse there the day he died that kept talking about how God was going to take him and it was God's plan and God this and God that.
Oh, how I wish people would shut up about God's plan. God does not plan for me, I plan for myself. I make my own mistakes, and I don't blame them on my invisible friend, God. I praise my own accomplishments, and I don't thank my invisible friend, God. I thought this woman meant well, but I hated her being in that room, preaching about God. My pebble of doubt turned into a big boulder.
But still, I hesitated to call myself an Atheist. My pebble was now a boulder, and it was heavy. It weighed me down, it made me angry, because I felt lost and empty. I felt like I should be able to feel this wonderful warm feeling. It sounded good, and I wasn't feeling anything good anymore.
After Uncle Steve died, I started living with my aunt and I got my first job. The people at my job were all very nice, and not a single one of them was religious. It was so nice, and so weird! Everywhere you go in Salt Lake City, there are Mormons everywhere, that's not just a stereotype! They were nice to me, and they were crude, crass, and very funny. I have worked there two years, and I still work there. In my time there, my heavy boulder of non-faith has grown lighter and lighter as I talk with the people I work with. I also talk to my mother now that she is an Atheist, and my step dad, even though he is no longer with my mother.
I recently read the book “God, No!” by Penn Jillette. I adore that book. It was hilarious, first of all. But that first chapter, when he talks about “I don't know” and about how Atheists aren't the arrogant ones, religious people are (which I totally agree with, but always felt like Atheists were ass holes because of my step dad) really made me feel good. And reading the stories, about the things he's done in his life and the way he talk about his family and friends with so much respect and love, it seems clear to me that he doesn't feel like he's missing anything without religion. Atheists are not heartless people, they're not mean people! They can certainly be ass holes, like everyone else in this whole God damned world!
After reading that book, I feel as though the heavy boulder of doubt is finally gone, replaced with the light and airy feeling of nothing. I don't feel empty without that party of myself, I don't feel like I'm losing anything without that feeling. That part of myself isn't missing, it was never there in the first place.
That book was the last step toward my finally saying, with certainty and pride, "I am an Atheist!"
I always knew I was an Atheist. It took some time, and some talking to other Atheists, and learning to understand them and myself, but now, after so many years of wanting to find God... I finally believe that it's okay not to believe.