Age: 19 years, 4 months, 13 days, 17 hours.
For most of my 19.3 years of life, I've believed without a doubt in my mind that there was no god. My parents forced my younger self to go to church every sunday for the first 8 to 10 years of my life. It was a chore and not one I enjoyed. My elder brother felt similarly, because before we drifted apart and started hating each other, we'd share how much we disliked having to go to church.
I was around 12 or 13 when I realized part of the reason I hated going to church so much was because not only did I disagree with the way my church preached, I didn't believe in the messages they tried to teach.
So I've spent more than a third of my life actively aware of my disbelief, and more than half of my life unaware, but still disagreeing with the religion forced upon my life.
Well, that is until last year. Last year was my first and last year of college. I attended Hope College, a Christian school on the opposite side of the state from me. I wasn't unnerved by the idea of attending a school focused on the Christian religion because religion wasn't forced upon me there. Attendance to worship was optional - which meant a no-go for me. I could go to my nursing classes and get a degree from one of the top three nursing schools in the nation without having to worry about being bugged and pestered by religious fanatics trying to convert everyone they see.
However, first semester happened and my classes were awful. I couldn't keep up very well and dropped two of them. I hated the feel of the school; I hated the classes and the professors. I hated studying. I was miserable. Winter break and I had a few weeks off at home with nothing but lots of food, video games, and books to read. Talk about pure bliss. Anyway, second semester started and I immediately hated my chem class. The professor was a dickbag and I couldn't stand him. Chem lab was even worse. I moved slowly and had to do everything twice for my partner who sprained her food or knee or something playing soccer and was on crutches. It's not that I hated helping her per se, just how long I took to do everything.
It was a week into the semester when I decided I couldn't stand it anymore. I made my decision not to come back to Hope and dropped chemistry, because I was not about to invest that much time and effort into a class that wouldn't even mean anything to me.
However, the first week wasn't all bad. In that week, I had German class. While I also immediately hated German, partly because I didn't like the professor, but because it involved real work too, but also teaching ourselves. German class included a nice surprise though. A cute girl from my dorm whom I had only every said "hi" to as we passed each other to and from classes. I mean, I didn't even know her name, just that she was pretty in the face and had a cute smile. Nothing would come of it, right?
Well, something did come of it. As the semester progressed, I forgot to cut my hair off as I had throughout the first semester. So after shaving my head again one day, she invited me to do homework with her in the basement. After that day, we started doing homework regularly together, and I started to like her. Soon the semester was half over and my second-half classes started. It turned out we had religion right after German together, too. So now, with two classes together and doing homework regularly; I was starting to like this girl a lot.
Now we've been dating for 7 months, 2 weeks, and 3 days. For the first time in my life, I've met someone who makes me want to change. I've liked girls who had religion in their lives before, but none of them ever made me want to be better than myself. Erika is the girl I found at school, who for the first time in my life on this planet has made me want to believe in a higher power. Never before had I found myself wondering if god was real, but with Erika, I want to believe he is. For a while now, I've found myself trying to believe.
I'm not sure if you'll read this tonight, Erika, but know that I love you, and that I am trying.
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