Whenever my mental health would decline, I would turn to religion. And every time my religion would get left behind, my mental health would improve.
I remember being a scared 5-year-old, sitting in church with my parents before my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder diagnosis. My father grew up Catholic, and my mother did not have a stable enough upbringing to attend church regularly. However, my siblings and I went to a United Methodist church every Sunday. Parallelling their religious experiences growing up, my mother was devout and attended church with us while my father stayed home. I would sit in the pew, waiting for the time when the children were called down for Sunday school, praying to God to apologize and beg him not to be sent to Hell. What I was apologizing for, I have no idea, but Obsessive-Compulsive thoughts rarely have logic to them. If you were a good Christian, God would hear your prayers and answer them. In our church, they explained that you would hear Him in your head. And ‘Bad Christians’ were the ones that would be going to Hell. So at age five, when I would beg and pray and hear nothing in return, I was convinced I was damned to Hell.
Besides being convinced I would live in eternal hellfire, Church was great for me as a child. With parents who only got back together because I was on the way, the house was always full of eggshells and holes in the drywall. Churches for Organized Religion are supposed to be a haven for those experiencing hardship, and in some cases, they are. I will always be grateful for my Sunday School teacher Miss Linda, who taught me how to make scrambled eggs and that some pizza tastes better if you use a napkin to sop up the grease, but walking into a Church as a child with severe and untreated OCD is one of the worst things I could have done for my little brain.
Mornings were always chaotic. With my parents arguing and me taking too long to get dressed, because I had to turn each doorknob five times and walk back and forth in the doorway before I felt safe, the relief I felt when walking through the quiet Church doors is indescribable. We would often arrive late, drop my then 1-year-old sibling off at the Church nursery, grab a donut, and head upstairs to the service. We would sing hymns, listen to the sermon, and I would pray over some invisible sin I had committed so I did not have to go to hell before the 1st grade.
In 5th grade, my elementary school decided that the entire grade would read the same book in English class because a movie adaptation would be coming out that February. It was about a boy our age who found out one of his parents is an Ancient Greek God and that there is a colossal prophecy he needs to go on an adventure to get through. The book was “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief” by Rick Riordan. We would read a chapter each day in class, and I became so sucked into the story that I asked my parents for my own copy to read ahead of the class. I read through it, and every book in the series was released at the time before the class even finished the first book. I became obsessed with Ancient Greek History and Mythology, eventually leading me to religion again.
“Can you ask your bible study if it is a sin if I believe other gods exist?” My mother had no idea how to respond when I asked her that at 13. I do not think she ever asked her bible study, but I wish she had. What would they have said? They would probably say that yes, it was, and it would be even more affirming in my belief that I would go to Hell. I do not even remember if I actually believed other gods were out there, but I knew I believed in something. It was almost like I could feel it, a warm feeling when I was scared of the thunderstorm outside, a peace when I touched the trees in my backyard; there was always something connecting me to the world around me. You could say that I interpret that as Gods working around me, leaving their presence all around the nature they create, or you could say I just had a big imagination and connected the fictional with what was around me. Either and both are true at the same time, I think.
In middle school, we changed churches. My father will say it is because the pastor started preaching anti-lgbt sermons. Still, it was actually because I was too anxious to tell the new Sunday School teacher that I did not want to be in the Christmas play. It was so bad to the point that I never wanted to show my face again. Either way, we started attending the church my mom’s best friend went to.
I am not good with change. At all. And this church was very different. Gone were the stained glass windows and old wooden pews. In their place was a small gray building with folding chairs that hurt to sit in. At my old church, we sang hymns from books they bought in the 70s to the tune of an old piano. At the new church, it was the pastor with his guitar and a projector. It was weird to me, and I hated it. But my mother loved it, so I would have to learn to as well.
My mom’s best friend Laurice, who had introduced us to the new church, lived on a farm a few streets away with her two daughters. One of them, named Victoria, was only a few months older than me and was my best friend growing up. They were the stereotype of a southern god-fearing farming family, even though they were from New England. After church, we would spend the rest of the Sunday at their house. Instead of the unfamiliar church becoming a haven from an unstable household, their house became that for us.
Eventually, I started to like it there. I joined the Youth Group, and it was so much more fun than Sunday School at my old church. Instead of memorizing bible verses and doing crafts, we performed a puppet show and went mini-golfing. As a teenager with only a few friends who spent most of their time inside reading books, it was like I was experiencing the fun I always read about teenagers having. It felt like I had found a family there, and I started to believe I should never have been diagnosed with any mental illnesses at all. Why would I need those labels when I could be called a Child of God?
When it was time to start high school, I decided I wanted to attend Catholic school. I had always dreamed of private schools with uniforms and a unique curriculum. Victoria already went there, as she was in the year ahead of me, and my cousin was looking into going there too. It seemed like the perfect solution. I hated my public school system for various reasons and wanted a religious education. Boy, was I wrong.
“I can see the way they look at me. Like they know. The teachers walk past me and glare. I hate it. Why am I here? They all hate me. I feel like I am performing, my laugh is fake, my smile is fake, and my personality is fake. None of this is real. I hate it here.” Reading my diary from 9th grade is upsetting. I had started to understand my sexuality and gender, all while being taught every day in school that what I knew about myself was bad. Bad, bad, bad. I prayed to God every night. Why would I be feeling like this? I was always told that God would give me a good life if I were good enough and prayed enough. God only gives His soldiers the battles He knows they can handle, right? It did not feel like it.
I was going to Hell.
As I withdrew into myself due to my worsening mental health, I turned to online communities for the understanding and compassion I did not have in my real life. I had discovered that the feeling I had as a child, that other Gods could be out there, was not weird. There were many people with similar experiences, and many of them actively practiced their pagan religion. I wanted to learn everything, desperate for something to ground me.
I devoured any information I could find. From books, to websites, to documentaries. They solidified what I had felt as a child, that the God belonging to Abrahamic religions was not my God. Paganism was freeing within all the rules and rituals I set for myself. It was, and still is to this day, peaceful. A peace that I craved as a child.
Spirituality, or whatever you personally call it, does not have to make sense. As long as it is helping you and not hurting anyone directly or indirectly, I believe that is alright. While I call myself a pagan and just believe in the forces of nature, using history to give them names and stories, others will call themselves pagan and believe that these Gods exist in some form around us all. There is peace in finding your understanding of the world and connecting to it, and I wish I found it sooner than I did.