There wasn't something specifically that caused me to leave, but I do remember where the thought began.

I grew up going to a Pentecostal church, which is one of those churches that believes in speaking in tongues (where people would randomly speak another language that I was fairly sure was gibberish) and where the pastor would pray over people and they'd collapse (there was a weird term for that but it escapes me now). That always seemed weird to me but it was happening to all these people and as a kid I thought who am I to question this?

Anyway, one day this guest speaker came to the church and he asked if anyone wanted to be blessed aka get knocked out by God. A bunch of people went up and I was thinking, "OK, I'm going to do this, but I'm not going down unless I REALLY feel something." So the guy is praying over everyone and their all dropping like flies, crying, praying, wailing, the whole deal. Eventually he gets to me and starts to pray over me. Nothing. I feel nothing at all. This guy is trying his hardest, like blessing the shit out of me and I'm just standing there waiting for something.

Now, a more "spiritual" person might say "You have to let go and accept God for it to happen. You can't test God blah blah blah." The thing is, I was absolutely game, but I wasn't going to lie to myself either and just drop for no reason. If I'm going to drop down crying then there's got to be something. But there was nothing. Back to the story.

Getting no results, the guy looks at me and shrugs and walks away (which in retrospect is like, wtf is this sham that this guy can't even tell me that it's ok). I just start bawling, all confused thinking what's wrong with me, does God not love me, etc. Later that night I thought, "maybe everyone else had the same reaction but just faked it. That eventually turned into the thought that maybe it's all fake.

I know a lot of users on reddit like to rag on bullshit religion stuff and I won't deny that religion can be linked to a lot of bad things in the world. But you never hear about the good things it does. To me (now) it's all crap but to someone like my mom it's this beacon of hope. She doesn't care if gay people get married, but she does want to believe that someone out there is watching over her children even if we're all adults now. That one day she'll get to be with her deceased brothers that she misses so much. It helps her let go of the things she can't control and it gives her peace. There are tons of inconsistencies, I know, and you can still get that peace outside of religion. But who am I to take that away from her? She's not hurting anyone. And as irrational as it seems, I kind of miss that feeling too. Because there's a lot of really bad things out there and it would be nice to know that all that suffering didn't happen for no reason.