How do you deal with life now that you are an atheist? (With a little of my life)

[Excited Penguin]

I'm twenty and your story is very similar to mine barring some details. I can relate to you.

I know about the whole feeling invincible shtick in young males, people should talk more about it. I don't know if it exists in young females too, though. You're right that it's pretty much indiscriminate in who it affects. I felt like I wouldn't die long after I lost religion and became an atheist at the age of fourteen. I still believe that in a sense - or, rather, I tend to ignore the fact that I'm not going to live forever, else I'd get a little too depressed with how fast time goes and that it's all for nothing.

This is such a misapplication of the capacity for reason.  That part of one's mind, the conscious part with which we deliberate, evolved to solve practical problems - like sleuthing the neighboring tribe's intentions and slaying them before they can slay you (if slaying there must be).

Grand questions of no practical value arise and we immediately set to work as if every imaginable question called for that part of the mind.  The problem with this part of the mind is it gets the idea it is the center of one's whole being, or even the only knower onboard.  But the mammalian brain we had as non-symbolic language users is still intact and handles a great deal of the processing.  But the part of our minds which handle our deliberate fiddling too often just takes credit for it all.  It is hard sometimes to accept that your conscious role, while important and often useful, is not always the best tool for the job.  When you consider the question "who am I" it would be good to reflect on the fact that expressive efforts on the part of our deliberating minds isn't "it".  That's just a tool.

Theists have gods to calm their deliberative minds.  They remind themselves that 'god' has a plan.  They remind themselves that it is best that 'His' will be done.  For those suffering angst of the sort Aroura and others report, it could help to get some perspective on the role of their deliberative efforts.  You're no more "on your own" than the theists are, but for non-theists that something more that is with you is more 'you', just not a part which reflects any deliberative choice you ever made.  If you can learn to esteem the vast storehouse of wisdom which is your mammalian mind, you can feel the weight of the world come off your shoulders a little too.

What does all that have to do with anything I said?