Religion has, throughout the past 5 years, become a sore topic for me.

For some background information, I grew up in a strict Seventh Day Adventist (SDA for short) family. My earliest memories of religion are from the Philippines; I lived with my grandmother, my Mama Sitas, and living in the mountains with hardly any electricity meant one thing. At night, after sundown, we'd have a devotional. We would sing hymns, read from the Bible, pray and then go to bed. It sounds like a creepy and crazy existence, but it wasn't to me. When religion is something you grow up with, you don't really view it as something abnormal. Prayer was a common thing; I prayed for my meals, I did devotionals with my family and I went to church every week.

Moving back to the States didn't make a difference in my religious upbringing. I transferred to a SDA school (private Christian school) and had pretty much the same routine. There was nothing cult like about it. I got into the same crazy adventures and scrapes as any normal 10 year old, the only difference was during the weekend. Starting Friday night after sundown, I'd settle myself into bed and read a book. Saturday meant church, Saturday afternoon meant nap time and Saturday night we could go wild again.

For high school there was no choice. No such thing as public school for my future. Nope. SDA children went to SDA elementary school and then to SDA high schools. And SDA high schools? Were boarding schools, so off to boarding school I went! (And this is another topic for another day, but not once do I regret going to Virginia for boarding school. I absolutely loved it and I do think it defines me as a person today).

After high school came the big decision. Would I go to an SDA college and get the full on SDA education? My mother was pressuring me to do this (Nicole you'll find a nice SDA husband!) and my dad left the choice up to me. We had a few conversations about this but I already knew what my decision would be ahead of time; I would pick a public, non-Christian college.

I had gotten a little tired of the rules and regulations that came with going to a SDA school. My view on my religious background was this: If I hadn't had enough faith and learned enough in the first 18 years of my life, would I really learn any more with another 4 years?

No. So I enrolled in Kean University. And met my current friends today.

This is when the religious confusion came into play. Now I had freedom. Absolute freedom. Free to do, say, act any way I wanted. Sure, I could have done this at SDA high school, but my actions there were more of an undercover deal; at college I didn't have to hide a TV under my bed or lower whatever rap music I wanted to play. I could blast that shit as loud as I wanted, drink wherever I wanted, do whatever I wanted.

Which meant I stopped going to church. And stopped doing my devotionals every day. And stopped praying.

I made several attempts to pick it back up again. For a while I'd make the drive to church to meet my parents, but mostly as a child's duty. I almost felt forced to do it. I felt like a fraud in front of all the older folks at church, who would keep coming up to me saying, "Wow Nicole, you've grown so much! I remember you when you were so young!". I didn't feel like taking off my earrings or lowering my skirt hemlines. I felt. . . fake.

I still haven't really discovered what religion means to me today. I know that I believe in God and I believe in heaven and faith. I believe in angels and prayer. I don't believe in rules and regulations and the older folks at church who look down on people. I believe in kindness and decency and doing good in the world. I feel that if religion had so many rules and excluded so many people, is that what God really wants? Doesn't He want us to be good to each other and treat each other nicely?

I've been so disillusioned by the contradictions I see and hear in church. How the elders and pastors talk and preach about God and yet when I walk through the foyer I hear the women and men talking shit about other members, hear them say things like, "Did you see what she was wearing? I can't believe it." Damn right I can't believe it. People put themselves on such high, religious moral grounds and don't take a minute to look at themselves and realize that what they're saying are just as bad as what others are saying. I don't like this 'holier than thou' attitude. That because you're part of a religious group, you've got the right to criticize someone who isn't. I don't like these rules involved in religion. I don't like the falseness of it.

I'm trying to find a way to reconcile how I currently feel about religion to the parts of me that are already ingrained with religion. To find a way to make the two things click.

Like I said. I still believe in God. I just don't believe in the people anymore, the people who preach to me about God.