The hardest part of becoming an atheist isn’t admitting that god isn’t real. It’s admitting that it was never real.

For so long, all I had was my faith. As a child when I laid in bed, shivering under a donated sleeping bag in our un-heated and un-insulated house, and I talked to Jesus. When my parents were “upset” I talked to Jesus. When I was suicidal, the only thing that kept me alive was the fear of hell. When I recovered from each episode I gave credit to Jesus for “delivering me”. As a teenager my whole world was church, my future plans were ministry and I lived for the high intensity services when “heaven came down”.

I can recognize that so much of that was harmful, when I talked to Jesus as a child, most of the time I was repenting for being rebellious and making my parents upset. After each suicidal episode I felt overwhelming anxiety that if I had another, I was “a dog returning to its vomit” or would be “possessed seven times over”.

However, it’s hard looking at my child self and telling her no one was listening. Her only friend and solace was a figment of her imagination. No one was coming to rescue her. No one cared. She was alone.