Happiness level after embracing atheism

[Lek]

Sounds like you may be clinically depressed, but did you ever stop to think that it may be the catholic church, and not Christ and christianity, that was the cause of your problems?  Why do you have to go to therapy to be able to accept an atheistic world?  Maybe it's because the world really is meaningless without God.

No, I really loved the church quite a lot, actually!

Lots of Christians have to go to therapy to accept a world WITH a belief in God, so I am not different in that respect.  Thanks for your armchair diagnosis, Freud, but I have a real diagnosis and it isn't clinical depression.  I am overly empathetic, and always have been.

And yeah, it IS meaningless....we have to inject our own meaning.  You can do that with your fairy tale if that is what keeps you from running out and committing crimes or whatever.  I'm doing it with charity work, volunteering, and my family. If there was a god, it would not, now that I think about it from outside the box, make everything suddenly meaningful.  

Letting go of fairy tales is really hard.  Growing up is REALLY hard, particularly if you are not taught how to be one by the "adults".  
It is just that most people are never able to actually let go of their fairy tales, and accept reality. Like you.   I find that a depressing...most of humanity spend their lives like infants with a security blanket, that have a temper tantrum every time anyone tries to take it away.  

OK.  I hear you.  Sorry if I was too abrupt.  Your post hit a cord with me because I'm a highly scrupulous person and being a catholic almost led me to the edge.  Instead of following Christ, I was stressing out over whether or not I was following all the church rules and laws perfectly and thought that I was surely headed to hell.  That doesn't mean that I don't believe that some people can be catholic and be a happy christian.  It means that I know that it has driven people away from Christ who would have otherwise remained with him.  But I can't, like Rob and others say I should, tell you that I agree with you about your views of God just so you can feel better.  You say that you are doing volunteer work, etc to make it meaningful, so why do still feel life is not meaningful.  Actually, you're thinking inside the box, not outside.  You're living in your 3 D world that you can see and touch and can't get out of the box to realize that there can be something other than what we can detect through nature.