Mental Depression To Suicide| Part 6: Disbelief In Religious Belief|

It's tragic to escape one form of mental captivity only to fall into another, even if it seems more appealing. You might reject religion, labeling it mental slavery, in your desire for freedom. But this very freedom, if pursued rigidly, can become a new kind of imperialism, surpassing colonialism and religious control.

However, this newfound freedom can be a double-edged sword. My depression makes suicide seem like a numbing escape, not a true end. Have you ever considered how religious beliefs can restrict your life? How fear of religion can steal your joy? Imagine living fully, free from those restrictions! You might even break free from the mental control, colonialism, and slavery that religion can impose.

But escaping religion completely can leave you strangely tethered to its past influence. It's a tragic progression – trading one form of mental captivity for another, seemingly better but ultimately similar. This leap towards liberation only fuels your depression, pushing you closer to suicide.

At my lowest point, I saw myself as a brainwashed hypocrite, a slave to religion. I believed it constricted my thinking and dictated every aspect of my life. "Sinners are liberal!" I thought. "Liberals aren't religious; they believe in themselves first!" This was a flawed justification for what I perceived as a rebellious act. But who was I sinning against? It felt pleasurable, harming no one, yet defying a set of rules meant to keep me calm – trapped in a mental prison where my will clashed with the religion's.

Here's the truth: someone's religion doesn't define their liberalism. It's how freely they interpret their faith to create a life that works for them.

I shed some of my religiosity and embraced a "liberal new me" – a stranger in my own skin. Naively, I thought by doing the opposite of everything my religion dictated, I'd achieve complete liberation – freeing my mind and soul from the mental shackles of religion. I believed liberalism meant sinning freely, and sin, in this new light, could be a learning experience or even pleasurable. After all, if it wasn't a sin for a liberal me, who was I sinning against?

In this pursuit of disbelief, a realization struck: my mental limitations, compressed thinking, and polarized views weren't dictated by religion, but by me. I wasn't a "liberal sinner" because I chose not to be. I couldn't blame religion for my mental captivity. I had the power to rise above it, but fear held me back.

It wasn't anger at the supposedly enslaving religion; it was frustrated fury at myself for fearing liberation. My own anxious fear of being liberal made me blame religion for my lack of it. Did I fear liberalism because my religion didn't tolerate it, or did I simply crave freedom without understanding what it truly meant?

The truth was, my religion had instilled fear in me. Even as the "liberal new me," I felt the lingering influence and torment of what I'd supposedly escaped. It dawned on me: I'd embraced liberalism either too late or in the wrong way.

Liberalism, ironically, depressed me more than the religion I was trying to escape. I felt free, yet strangely controlled by what I perceived as the non-authoritarian, non-dictatorial nature of liberalism. It seemed just as restrictive as my religion, dictating how I should think and act in the name of being "liberal."

Being liberal meant I could say what I wanted, but I anxiously worried about how my words would be received. Was I communicating them in the "right" way, as defined by this new ideology?

Even though I subscribed less to religion and became "more liberal," my mind remained neither truly liberal nor free. I had escaped religious control, but it felt like I was still colonized by its influence. My mental traumas, tremors, depression, and the enslaved state of my mind persisted despite my disbelief. It was clear that I was the obstacle to my own liberation.

Yet, despite this realization, my depression finds no solace in anything. Suicide now seems like an escape, a numbing oblivion rather than death. But perhaps there's another way. Perhaps true liberation lies not in rejecting everything I once held dear, but in forging a new path that acknowledges the past but isn't defined by it.