Confession time

I was talking to my sister and a couple other people earlier today, and they were talking about religion. It brought to mind a topic that seems to resurface in my life a lot recently, so I'd decided to make a confession about something that my family does not know. (Here's hoping they don't read this blog, as I'd prefer it remain secret from them until roughly a year and four months from now, at least.)

I am an atheist. I make no apologies for this, here on the internet. However, I've not told any of my family members, nor even most of my close friends. It's a secret. And it's a secret for a good reason.

I live in a relatively religious, right-wing part of Wisconsin. Believing in the Christian God is the default state. Sure, whether a person is Lutheran, Catholic, or some other flavor of Protestant isn't necessarily pinned down, but those are your basic choices. To find anyone who isn't one of these is extremely rare. I'm a relatively outgoing person, involved in a lot of music, theatrical arts, and various things on college campuses, and I know a grand total of four other atheists in real life. I know more hardline fundamentalists (twenty-some) than I do people who might believe something else.

My family is not unusual for the area. My parents both graduated from the same very Catholic college, and the man who was essentially a surrogate grandfather to me was a priest. There's a crucifix hanging in the living room. My friends are also, by and large, Christian, due to the fact that I attend a Catholic high school. They consider any atheist to be at best highly misguided, at worst an antitheist who's going to come and eat their children/pets. Which leads to my complete reluctance to tell anyone about my beliefs. Should I tell anyone, not only would I likely lose many of my friendships, but I would lose my good relationship with my parents, and (on a more selfish note) many privileges resulting from that good relationship with my parents. Not only would I lose my support network of friends and acquaintances, but I'd probably be grounded (which sounds like a nothing punishment until you realize that I'm sixteen, and that being grounded means losing access to the car, the internet, my phone, my keyboard, and all my books, and that's basically all I have).

Basically, I'm scared. To make an analogy to another problem I'm going to have sometime soon, I'll basically have to come out to my family and friends as something that they've all learned to pity, dislike, hate, or condescend towards. Not fun at all. I'm going to college in 479 days, if I did my math correctly just now, and I'm holding off on telling them, or letting them find out, until then. My family and my friends at school, all of whom are good people except for this one issue, are my support network. I'm considered a model student at my school (no, really). There's going to be one hell of a backlash once I 'come out'. I need to have another network in place by that, one that already accepts me for who I am, by the time that happens. I need people, and I'm afraid I'll lose the ones I'm closest to without having others ready to catch me, if I tell the world too soon.

So I'm admitting this all to strangers on the internet, spambots and searchbots, and the maybe one person who does bother to read what I post, in lieu of telling them. I'm becoming more blatant in my  displays of belief in real life, subconsciously hoping to reveal myself and get it over with, but I can't bring myself to say it just yet. This is my little bit of catharsis, writing this, here in the dark at my kitchen table. I'm an atheist, and that's not going to change.




Rant/confession over with. Sorry. I'll have amusing things tomorrow when I'm not feeling vaguely philosophical/angsty.