The need to believe?

[mordant]

mordant? I don't know you, but your posts really have left me with a lot of positive things to mull over, thank you!

You are welcome. It feels good to know that.

I sound like this fragile little vase, and I'm not, at some point, we all cope with tragedies, etc...and even ''with'' faith, I've felt terribly sorrowful before, and even distraught. Faith isn't a shield but it has brought me some comfort that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and I can't provide the light myself. That is what indoctrination teaches you, that you can't make it on your own, that you're ill equipped to take on the tough parts of life, so you need a god or a savior or something outside of yourself to do it. This is not an easy mindset to break, but logically, I know that it is not based on facts. And facts are important to me, because the truth will set one free.

Exactly ... you are stronger than you likely know. But I am not sure most of us really know ourselves nearly so well in, say, our 20s as in our 40s or 50s. This isn't all about religion, some of it is just normal growth as a human. At your age I was a full-on evangelical with no thought of leaving the faith. So you are further along than I was. I respect that.

Faith teaches that there is no comfort in the secular world, and that such comfort ultimately exists in a higher power. So you keep thirsting for this source to provide you what you lack, and so when I was an atheist, logically I was spot on, but when my grandmother died...I was fish out of water. Who or what do I turn to? People can't help me, my parents can't help me, my bf at that time can't help me, or maybe I just didn't think they could help me. That's probably more the case.

Paradoxically, both things are true. Others can be present for and with us and remind us that we aren't alone on our path. On the other hand there's a sense in which people can't help us with some things. Even Christians have a saying, "god has no grandchildren", meaning you can't borrow anyone else's faith; your relationship with god is yours alone. Christian or not ... when you lose a loved one, no one can sort that out for you. The most they can do is share any similar experiences that they've gone through, and assure you (truthfully) that things will eventually feel better. All I can say is that thanatology (the study of grief and loss) has been (for example) way more helpful to me than Christian dogma or platitudes in this regard. The problem of course when your grandma died, was that you needed something to reach out for quickly, and weren't established with any tools outside of those offered by your faith. That's why I suggested Becker as an example of someone who you might want to pursue to bolster yourself against the inevitable future events like this that you'll face in your life.

So let's say I go down the atheist path again, I will have to create a new normal of how to deal with stress and strife. One of my atheist friends said to me recently...''you've always been your strength, you just have chosen to attribute it to something else.'' While logically that makes sense, I just need to believe it, you know? I need to have faith in myself. That's what's been lacking, if I'm honest.

You'll gain more faith in yourself just by virtue of growing as a person year over year. Experience matters. I'm just suggesting it will help to take up a study of mortality / death / how to make meaning for yourself from non-religious sources. There's a lot to be had. Religion (much less conservative religion) doesn't have a corner on that market.