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like any normal kid, i never liked going to church. i was actually pretty obnoxious. i remember singing as loud as i can, the plaques on the walls, to the tune of the hymn at the time (catholic church). singing the hymns was actually the only good part to church cos i've always been a musical person. butyes. i've never liked church and i hated sunday school. my parents pretty much stopped making me go before i was 10 bcos i'd protest so much. i didn't understand it and never bought into religion. then the teen years came along and i was lost and depressed (or so i thought) and my friends went to first baptist youth groups.. so i decided to come along too. at first, i thought it was really cool because it was something i actually felt like i was belonging in. all i wanted was to belong... and the whole god thing appealed to me because who wouldn't want a candy coated free from sin life in heaven when you die? still, i don't think i bought into it as much as i made myself believe. it was all pretty forced and fake. so the day i turned against religion for good was the day i realized... am i going to be happy with god if i can't even be happy with myself? i was probably around 12 or 13 at the time. i realized how the church was making god or religion seem like an external sense of salvation, when i knew that it all had to start from yourself. within you without you. i think thats really the core of religion anyway, but people just misinterpret it when they go to the steeple and follow the creeds. like the controversial movie stigmata, quoted from the gospel of thomas, "The Kingdom of God is inside you and all around you, not in mansions of wood and stone. Split a piece of wood and I am there -- lift a stone and you will find me."
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And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
~Anais Nin
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