when i was a kid, i had a loose concept of god that was something inherently gentle and soothing to think about. i'm not sure what breathed life into it (because i was maybe 5 and this was before i can really remember any outward influence) but they were always something clad in robes and i liked to think about it
i remember being scrappy and adventurous, in love with the world around me and full of wonder and that free will shit that everyone was going on about
then around 7 or 8 i became old enough for adults to manipulate into obedience
as the years went on, god became this twisted, abrasive, thorny and hateful thing that spit on anything that wasn't unquestionable obedience (and clearly it must be pure coincidence that said disobedience was anything my parents didnt like) and my life became peppered with pleas for forgiveness at this angry, vengeful thing my parents seeded into my brain, as if a friend i once knew was only seconds away from smiting me into dust and burning me alive for eons
and then my parents became divorced, and as a Purely Coincidental I'm Sure result, god became scarier, and more frightening than ever before.
when i turned 13 i watched my dad nearly put his fist through a glass table, all for the sake of "protecting my brother and i's souls" or some shit. because we were liars who needed saving. and not because he was divorced and abusive and sure of some secret plot our mom had cooked up for us to be conscripted in some relationship war he made up. but it broke me, even when i knew he was cooking this up in his head, the omnipotent but kind friend i knew when i was 5 was in leagues with this whole thing, apparently.
there was even a period where some neurological conditions i was going through at the time were sold to me as ploys for attention that i had to pray forgiveness for.
when my brother and i stopped having to see my dad for the above reasons we lived with my stepdad and mom, and while it was """nicer""" it was still a decidedly christian upbringing that worked in my stepdad's favor because he was more passive aggressively "needle you until you break" abusive to my dad's "take off the belt" "scream at you" anger (though even he had his evil moments, it was still a far cry from Dad's House and that tricked me into believing it was fine at the time)
one day when i was 14 we stopped going to church due to events happening to my parents that i wouldnt understand until my early to mid 20s. i started to make more nuanced and diverse friends and wouldn't you know it, the concept of god slowed down on being terrifying and wasn't some thing that had a sniper rifle trained on me at all times if i jerked off or breathed weird
it was a slow undoing but i was shown a world that wasnt commanding obedience and it seemed more in line with the whole Free Will Given To Us thing
god stopped being wielded by my parents and i was permitted to enter and leave various stages of belief systems for myself, ranging from full ass atheism to agnosticism to whatever i was making up, et cetera.
this was a weird stage of my life because i had never known freedom to believe in what i want, but god stopped working as a way to scare me into obedience and while it unfortunately meant being chided for every other avenue of my life, it meant they had to yield that god could no longer be weaponized
in being allowed a greater distance from the concept of god and omnipotent beings and whatever, ironically my relationship to the whole idea became a lot more healthy, and these days its something i can muse on with peace because it isn't something being used as a convenient tool for parents to avoid having to answer their kids' damn questions
i currently don't really ascribe to any system of belief more so than i am kind of loosely spiritual and yeah i kinda give occasional thought that there could be things beyond scientific understanding, but that science and beliefs don't necessarily have to be at odds with each other.
either way im more focused on just not trying to make other people's lives worse and trying to just Be
i think if there's a god it's something cosmologically and mathematically out of human brains to conceive, but these days it feels a lot more friendly and like a homie has returned
anyways thanks for reading if you did, im not sure how much of this comes across clearly bc i def had to just ramble it out but its always been on my mind and i guess these days i want to show people that beyond goofy queer furry who post doo doo joke i am ultimately human and tender and currently working through decades of scar tissue and broken glass to emerge on the other end as something worth me nurturing
