Cassandra's Story

(Via Cassandra)

I would like to share a bit about myself.

I was raised to believe. We attended church, but it was sporadic.

My father was a Vietnam veteran with dependency problems. He was a drug addict and alcoholic. As children, we were exposed to, and even allowed to use drugs and alcohol by our father and later our step-father.

My parents divorced when I was 6. My father eventually ended up in prison for attempted murder and my mother remarried, another alcoholic, this one highly abusive, mentally and ,at times, physically.

My father became "born-again" in prison. And when he was released he had arranged for me and my siblings to be "saved". We went through with it. I was nervous about it even then. I wasn't sure "why" exactly, I just knew that the people at his church scared me with their loud, erratic behavior. They spoke in tongues, fell on the floor, flung their arms up in the air, and dang near did everything short of drooling all over themselves. That was unlike any church I had ever been to. I didn't know what had come over these people to make them act like this and then after the service they were "normal" to talk to. I didn't want any part of that. But I went through with the "saving" because I feared telling the adults that I didn't want to do it. I felt that if my heart wasn't into it, that it wouldn't mean anything anyway. It was just words I was saying. I did still believe in God, just not the way these people did.

I was taught as a child to take the bible literally. My father would tell me that if you were not afraid to ask god for things out loud in front of people that he would grant your prayers. The only thing I ever recalled asking for was my grandmother not to die of cancer (which she later did anyway).

I started having doubts then, around the age of thirteen. I would entertain the "what-if's" in my mind more and more frequently until I had decided that it was a definite possibility that the Christian God did not exist.

I struggled in my teens. I had an abusive step-father and a mother that let him get away with it. I wasn't understood. I couldn't see any way out of my problems. God surely didn't help me any. I ran away, started using drugs and drinking regularly. I ran with a crowd of kids that was into satanism and gore. I thought that I was angry at god. Then I started to realize that satanism was just as pointless as christianity. I wasn't angry at god, I was angry at the people that portrayed him this way. I was angry that I wasn't told that I had a choice. None of what I WAS told made any sense. And I was hurt that I had been betrayed, that I loved something that was a figment of my imagination and that I was lead to it by humans that loved me.

When I started college and attended various science classes was when it all settled in. I finally decided that I did NOT believe in a god. I soon found out what word defined that. Atheist. It took a little while longer to be comfortable with saying it.

But now I am a proud atheist. I have since strived to lead a normal, healthy life. I have been drug free for over 15 years, and even so I never had any addictions to any of them. I have a college education, a good full time job with benefits where I have worked for almost 8 years. I am married to the man of my dreams, we have a beautiful son together. We have a house, life insurance, medical insurance, etc. We are not rich but we are comfortable and independent. I have some personality issues due to my past that I acknowledge and have put great amounts of effort into to change for the better. We are healthy, happy, productive members of society, and if I were never to tell anyone of our "lack of religion" they would never guess it on their own, for we are not the "barbaric heathens" that so many creationists portray us as.

Thank you for allowing me to tell you the short version of my story. And thank you for taking an interest in it. I hope you get many responses to your request. We need to let others know out there that they are not alone in their thoughts.