Coming Out

{Before I begin this post I want to say that I am not at all equating what I am learning about "coming out" as an atheist to the experience of coming out as gay to one's family or friend group. I just don't know how else to try and describe it. Forgive me if I fuck it up.}

I didn't want this.

I didn't choose it.

I didn't sit down one day, a few years back, and think to myself, "You know what, self? I'd like to find a way to blow up everything I have ever believed because that way I can strain or break all sorts of important relationships and piss off all the people around me," before setting off down some perceived path toward atheism. This hasn't been an easy process. It has been many things but easy isn't one of them.

It has been scary and really fucking lonely.

But all of that doesn't change what I believe to be true. I'd like to say that if I could, I'd go back and somehow avoid "catching" atheistic beliefs, but I wouldn't. Or that I would take back my previous post and just keep it to myself instead of sharing it. I wouldn't. I shouldn't have to.

It has involved unpacking all sorts of uncomfortable feelings about religion and Jesus and the mounting evidence I kept uncovering against those ideas. It involved separating what I wanted to believe and what I truly, to my core believed. And recently, it involved a lot of personal introspection. My post may have come out of no-where for those reading it, but it has been months in the writing.

Atheism isn't contagious. I sure as fuck don't want to convert you. Your kids won't end up atheist if they play with my kids. I'm still me.