When I was young - maybe 7 or 8 or something - I found out there was no Santa Claus. I overheard my mother talking with one of her friends or relatives on the phone about tracking down some gift or another for my brother and I. Whatever it was, I don't remember; it's not important to the story.
What is important is that those particular gifts had been in our stockings, which everyone knew were filled by Santa. My father noticed me listening and started humming very loudly to get my mom's attention, but the damage had been done. In fact, he probably made it worse by being so obvious about it.
I was sad. Santa wasn't real? How could that be? He was magic! He was the spirit of Christmas! He gave me presents and cards every year! How could he not be real? But clearly he wasn't, and my parents didn't want me to find out because they knew it would upset me. Well, too late for that.
What happened next was weird. I made the conscious decision to keep believing in Santa Claus. Even though I now had reason to believe he was only imaginary, I chose to ignore it. I chose to pretend I'd never witnessed that exchange, and that everything was the way it had always been. Even though I knew - and what's more, I knew that I knew - I didn't accept it. Santa was real, and if I believed it hard enough, he would be.
This continued for maybe two years or so. I want to say I was around 10 when everything fell apart. I'd been doing a good job keeping it up, still writing letters and leaving cookies and everything. It was as much for my brother's benefit as for mine, since he had yet to be disillusioned, as far as I knew. I don't even remember what set it off - I may have just straight-up asked them about it, I don't know - but I had a conversation with my parents in which they explained as gently as they could that yes, Santa - and the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and all the rest - were only just pretend.
I broke. I was crushed. Heartbroken. Devastated. Even as I cried - sobbed, more like - I couldn't help but think in the back of my mind that this shouldn't really have come as a surprise. After all, if I were being honest with myself, I'd known for years.
But that was just it. I wasn't being honest with myself, and I hadn't been. I'd known, but I hadn't let myself believe it, or even think about it. I ignored what my rational mind was telling me and just went with what I wanted to be true because it made me feel better, but I couldn't do that anymore. That was the real reason I was so upset, I think, now that I look back on it. It wasn't the shock of finding out Santa was made-up, for that wasn't really a shock at all. It was the fact that I could no longer pretend, that I no longer had any excuse to ignore the facts, now that they'd been laid bare in front of me explicitly. No matter what I wanted to be true, it wasn't true, and I could no longer avoid facing that reality.
I recovered, obviously. Adjusting to a world without Santa isn't particularly difficult after all, and kids are resilient. Still, I'll never forget that crushing feeling of anguish, the wracking sobs in response to something that in all honestly shouldn't be that big of a deal. I think if I'd let the reality sink in right away instead of fighting it for so long, it wouldn't have been so hard. But when you're a child, you don't think that way. Hell, most adults don't think that way either except in hindsight. Case in point.
Fast forward a few years. I was around fourteen, or near enough that it makes no difference. I'd been going to church since before I could talk (we were raised Catholic), and had attended Sunday School for most of my childhood as well (even if most of that time was spent thinking up inventively immature names for the "Hello, my name is..." stickers). I digress.
It popped out of nowhere, as most profound thoughts do, when we were driving home one day. My mother, as always, reminded us to bless ourselves as we drove past the church. Instead of just doing it like I always did, I instead thought, "Why?" This couldn't possibly be important, could it? With all the things we do and say in our lives, even at 14 I could hardly imagine God or Jesus really caring one way or another if we blessed ourselves while driving past a church.
That one little thought took root, and I started looking at all the other ritual behaviors I had been raised to remember. Pray the rosary, genuflect, Eucharist, the Nicene Creed, and all of it just stopped making sense. What did any of this have to do with being a good person? With believing in God? Upon closer inspection, it all started to look unimportant and made up.
That terrified me, since I instinctively knew where such a line of thought would lead, and that I didn't want to go there. So, without even realizing what I was doing, without even considering the experience I'd gone through only a few years before, I forced myself to stop thinking about it. I poured myself into the church like I never had before. As a kid it had always been boring, but now, it felt like my life and soul depended on it. Literally.
I'm sure I never thought the actual phrase "Don't let me stop believing", but that's what was truly running though my heart and mind every time I prayed. I didn't want to lose my faith. It had been a part of me my entire life. I'd always taken it as a given that God was just as real as my parents, and the stories of the Bible were just as authentic as the ones in my history textbook. Now these beliefs were being challenged - not by some overheard conversation or outside influence, but by my own mind. For no matter how hard I tried to suppress them, the doubts and questions I'd been asking myself grew every day, and became harder and harder to ignore.
Eventually - I don't recall exactly when, but I remember thinking about it at the time - I reached that same state as before, where I knew it wasn't real but chose to pretend it was. I tried so hard to get back that feeling that I'd lost, and I didn't even realize I was making myself miserable doing it. I was caught in a Sisyphus-like struggle and only my subconscious was aware of it.
At last I did allow myself to let go - to let that boulder roll down the hill once and for all and not chase after it, not try to push it back up. And it was painful, yes. But less so than the first time. Maybe because I'd gone through the experience before and could handle it better, maybe because I hadn't fought against it for so long, maybe because I was older and more emotionally mature, I don't know.
What I do know is that finally accepting none of it was real came as a great release. The terror I'd felt at losing that connection washed away in the knowledge that there had never been a connection to lose in the first place. It was all in my head. Now I was all the better equipped to face reality head-on, and it felt great. Liberating. Peaceful. Enlightening. All those things you hear about people experiencing when they reach an epiphany - they really do happen.
I didn't say anything to my parents for another couple of years and kept going to church, going through the motions. I didn't want to hurt them. My mom more than my dad, really. Amazingly, it was neither painful nor miserable. A trifle boring at times, but more intellectually stimulating than I ever remembered it being when I actually believed in it. Strange, that.
Finally, when I was 18 my mom and I were in the car leaving the doctor's for one reason or another, and she mentioned heading to church later that evening as it was Ash Wednesday. I felt in my gut that this was the moment (also I really didn't want to go, but that's not the point). I would later joke (and still do) that I gave up Catholicism for Lent.
People ask all sorts of questions when they learn you're an atheist. The one I get most often is some variation of, "Aren't you unhappy?" The assumption seems to be that without some sort of higher power to believe in, my life must be empty or lacking in some way. Having lived on both sides of that dichotomy, I can say that the exact opposite is true. I've never been so miserable as when I was forcing myself to believe in something that in my heart I didn't, and I've never been happier than when I let those beliefs go. It was as though they were an anchor on my mind, weighing it down, and now I'm free. Free to explore, free to experience the world for what it is instead of through the lens of what I and others think it ought to be.
My life is anything but empty. If anything, the knowledge that there isn't some magical cloud-land to go to after I die gives everything that much more meaning. Every experience is special, every bit of nature and history I can observe is beautiful, the universe and its vast grandeur never fail to overwhelm me with a sense of wonder and awe. I've been known to stand outside looking up at the night sky for hours at a time, doing nothing but just contemplating, just feeling the wonder and beauty of existence. It's something I think everyone should try. It's a humbling yet euphoric experience. In short, going back to the title of this entry, I didn't want to be an atheist, but I'm glad I am.
There are no gods. How do I know this? The same way I know there is no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, no Tooth Fairy. The same way I know there is no Hogwarts, no Wonderland, no Oz. Someone made them up, and in our collective imagination we gave life to them. The only problem is at some point we forgot that they weren't real, that they were only stories, that they were born in the minds of men (and women). That we created them, not the other way around.
There may well be some cosmic force in the universe that our current science cannot explain, understand, or even detect. It may fit some people's definition of "divine" in nature. It may even have a consciousness, I don't know. What I do know, beyond any doubt, is that if such a thing exists, then it truly is beyond our current capacity to comprehend. If such a thing exists, it in no way resembles any of the myriad things mankind has invented over the centuries to represent it. If such a thing exists, we are so far beneath its notice - and it so far above ours - as to make no difference whether it exists or not. It is completely irrelevant. And finally, if such a thing exists, it sure as hell doesn't give a crap if I draw a cross on my forehead when I drive past a church.
