About a week ago, while hanging out with two friends in my dorm, I was reminded of how alienating it can feel to be agnostic. My roommate, who is Catholic, and my other friend, who has transitioned from being Episcopalian to another faith, were talking about who their god-parents were. When I realized I couldn’t remember who mine were, I texted my mom to ask about them, to which she responded that I didn’t have any because that was a “Christian thing.” While I brushed it off in the moment, I’ve been thinking more about the rites of passage that I’ve never had because of my lack of religion. It’s strange that I will never experience the same kind of security that comes with religion that others do.

I was raised in a non-religious family. This means that in forms where you label your spirituality I always select the agnostic or atheist choice, and that I believe in nothing except for scientific fact. This also means that I’ve been told that I’m going to hell, and that I “can’t celebrate Christmas.” Contrary to what some classmate yelled at me in fifth grade, I actually do celebrate Christmas, but simply with the religious context removed. My family sees holidays not as dates of spiritual significance, but rather as times to connect with friends. 

Some people find my beliefs, or lack thereof, incomprehensible, but for me, following a religion seems comparable to taking a fantasy novel literally. It’s not that I have anything against people who are spiritual—in fact, I sometimes wish I could be like them. To have religion is to have an automatic community you are a part of. Organized religions offer the support of having a second family within one’s mosque, church, temple, or otherwise. Even if you practice a belief that doesn’t interact in the ways major religions do, there’s still something comforting in knowing that other people believe in the same principles that you do. Not having that sense of community, those shared traditions and ideologies, it can certainly make me feel like an outsider sometimes. 

It sometimes feels like I’m left out from something that others can bond over. In the same conversation of discussing god-parents in my dorm, my friends also shared stories about their baptisms and confirmations. It was interesting for me to learn about these ceremonies that I barely knew the purpose of, but it was also a reminder that religious experience is something I’ll never be able to share with them. I am reminded of this also in an academic setting. Lots of the art and literature that we examine for classes throughout our academic career utilize religious imagery. Many teachers simply expect students to be familiar with the common symbols and stories of common faiths (particularly Biblical references, seeing as American curriculum is largely Eurocentric and thus focuses on Christianity). As someone who was only ever taught the barest details of religions because of their irrelevance to my beliefs, it can be difficult to try to contribute to academic conversations about them. 

There is no time when I wish I believed in a higher power more than when I think of life’s “big questions.” Because of the lack of scientific evidence, I don’t believe in any sort of afterlife, including the continuation of a soul or conscience. So, as you could imagine, not having a religion to explain to me what death will be like leaves me with a lot of existential dread. The concept of ceasing to exist in any way, shape, or form is one that’s so disturbing for me to wrap my head around that I wish I had a religion to turn to that offered an alternative explanation of death. I’ve tried to experiment in spirituality. My senior year of high school I spent a lot of time researching Wiccan practices in hopes of finding some answers there. I’ve explored Reiki and other energy work, as well as the “Witchtok” videos that show up on my algorithm on TikTok. 

Yet even after some time playing around with these concepts, I still don’t believe in anything that isn't scientifically proven. As much as I still love to read tarot cards for my friends, I know that I am only improvising in the reading, and I’ll find no answers about existence in them. It’s hard to live without the comfort of religion, but it’s a way of living in which I can search for and create my own community.