In Search of My Identity — Christian, Jew, and Finally Atheist

If there is a god, he’s was either blissfully unaware of my prayers, or he enjoyed seeing me in hell for my entire life.

Me, through the years. At least, I always dressed well. Own photo.

I’ve been on a long search for my identity. Unlike most people, I had no cultural influence, no parenting (not even bad parenting), and together with my autism, it means I have been lost my entire life. As one therapist put it, “You grew up like a wolf child.” That therapist also said to me, in my last session with her, “People who have lived through what you have lived through are dead by the age of twenty-five. What you have achieved is a miracle. You have the rare capacity to re-invent yourself, over and over and over again.”

I grew up in a secular home. I had no idea what been Jewish or Christian or anything else meant. One day my mother came home from work and took my brother, my sister, and I to a minister and we were all three baptised to become Methodists. I must have been eight or nine. I had no idea what it meant.

My home life was terrible, and I have detailed a tiny fraction of it here. My inability to support myself financially, to have a boyfriend or a relationship, or even to have a social circle, goes back directly to the fact that I was never permitted social contact with…