I used to think that if I didn’t attend church with my mom, that it would make a bad person. As a kid I was raised in a Catholic household. We would go to church every Saturday in the afternoon. I would say that my mom is the most religious in the family. My brother later stopped attending church when he was about fourteen. I never knew why he stopped going, but he just did. I wanted to be like my brother my whole life, so if he didn’t go to church anymore, why should I? I would still attend church with just my mother. When I got to this building we would always go early like around 6:15. When I walked in I could smell wood from the benches and I would be able to smell the so called holy water. I always sat on the right side of my mom every time we went. We would wait for the pastor to walk in the church with his crew. During mass I would space off and not listen because I wasn’t interested. When I would space off my mind would run all over the place I would always think, “why am I here”, “what’s the point of this”, and “I'm going to hell for not listening”.  One day I told my mom that I didn’t want to go to church anymore. I could tell that I made her upset but she just told that I still have to go. So as the years went on I still would go to church and dislike it. Since I hated going to church and didn’t believe in god, I thought I was a bad person. 

But then I talked to my family about how I felt and said that it is fine that I don’t believe in a God, but I still have to respect them and the religion we are in. I was okay with their response because at least they knew how I felt. But I still felt like I was a bad person because I didn’t believe in a higher power. Until I met my two best friends. I met them six years ago and they didn’t believe in god or religion. It made me feel really good because they were really good people and they didn’t let religion define them. So now the crazy Mexican girl with wavy dark brown hair and beautiful brown eyes and the beautiful Asian girl with fair skin and skinny hands didn’t have a religion are the most wonderful people in this world. They didn’t let some religion get in their way about being a good person. They tried to be the best they could and they succeeded at it and so did I.

So now I think that I don’t need a religion to define me being a good person. Four years later and I'm doing great on my own without any type of higher power. My family may not like that I don’t define myself as a catholic but it doesn’t take away the fact that I care about them. I later realized that there is a ton of people out there that think like me about religion. This long battle with myself and my family led me to be the way I am today and I think it shaped me to be a better person.