i live in little rock which is more accepting of alternate lifestyles, religions, race, and other things but as you migrate further from little rock things start to get more "traditional". people i work with come from all walks of life. some i feel comfortable enough with to be open about my atheism, others knowing my theistic beliefs would be very detrimental to my career situation. my uncle(/boss & president of company) is very anti-obama, anti immigrants, anti-gay, choice, basically he's a republican...you know the hate email forwarding type...it's very difficult to have conversations at parties with his family...they are all super religious, i just don't fucking buy it...any of it...how can i be related to people who honestly believe some old ass stories from a book.

*stepping off soapbox

personal experiences with atheism will vary according to location and interaction with other people, hate is everywhere and can be found in all walks of life. the good news is not jesus, it's that atheism and science are making progress to create a better future for humanity...judging by my current outlook on life, i feel that we're going to be okay. ;)

oh btw I'm 24 work weekends at a Methodist church and pretty sure i've convinced my catholic grandmother that obama is okay and there is no god. so yeah i feel good...(grandparents can sometimes be racist, it's not their fault it's just the generation they were brought up in...)

ADDITION 2-ish:

When I first started high school my mom put me in a private school because she thought me and my twin needed to pursue our lives separately so I thought hmm... private school. I think that's when I first realized I suffered from depression. It was horrible. I had 2 friends at that school, two guys that were just as pathetic as I was. We played yu-gi-oh drew pictures of cartoons and were kinda the loners. we had each other and that was it. we didn't fit in with the visor wearing tennis douche bags, the jocks, the urban princesses or the other pretty rich people that went there. i remember being spit on having my locker glued shut by my lab partner and being given Saturday school for calling a teacher by her first name...i literally said "goodbye Natasha" i liked her name because it reminded me of Natalia from goldeneye, then i had to spend Saturday vacuuming her classroom. i remember another time crying under the pews in the schools chapel...after my mom found out how much i hated school and my life at that point she moved me (sophomore year) to a county school near our house... i was so relieved, i would finally be accepted (but not fit in) i found a small group of upper class-men that i thought were the shit, they drew comic related things in art class, listened to punk and liked hanging around me...it wasn't until later that i only realized they liked me because they could get me to do anything they wanted, because i was trying to fit in and impress them. i would do stupid things and get into trouble, i would ask girls perverted questions that they told me so that they could laugh (albeit [unbeknownst to me] at my expense) while i thought they thought i was funny. after a year or so they thought i was just annoying and disassociated themselves with me, i fell into the pattern of friends that still did childish things, like card games and cartoons and whatnot, it's the only people i could talk with. there were more of them here and they liked me. some were younger some were my age but i had found people like me with similar interests. i wasn't' one of the pretty popular guys with the abercrombie shirt and the new ford truck i was the kid with cargo shorts and the dragon-ball z tee shirts, i was the one who could tell you everything about cartoons, and comics, and toys, i was naive in the ways of women and didn't' see them as a force of attraction yet. i was kind of a late bloomer so i never really felt like dating or anything. when i went to college however already years late on the game i first found my interest in women, i fooled around with a girl or two but the chance to "become a man" never came up. i was so focused on just getting people to like me, to not be discouraged when i was around was my main goal, i ended up becoming (not close) friend zoned by most everyone. i cried many a night in my dorm room wondering if anyone really cared. people would be like "ironmanthing it can't be that bad, you have lots of friends" to which i would say "i can literally sit in my dorm all night any day of the year and not have one phone call from anyone my age" anyone. and it was true. i was fun to be around, yea, but no one liked me well enough to invite me around. they could tolerate me it seems but wouldn't go out of their way to include me specifically. it's been a very lonely and sad road that i have traveled and now that I'm reaching mid 20's I'm seeing acquaintances i know and knew getting married, dying, moving, becoming successful, achieving their dreams and i sit and think to myself, where did i go wrong, what did i miss to become so overwhelmingly alone. I'm afraid to break out of my comfortable simple daily routine, afraid to mix it up and enjoy life. I've just been sitting waiting for life to happen to me. i thought maybe someday some woman will find me attractive and start pursuing me, I thought maybe I'll get lucky by chance somewhere. but here i am, 24, months from 25, a quarter of my life gone, and what do i have to show for it? an impressive DVD, book, and comic collection, a couple people online who like racing or shooting zombies with me? yeah I've got relatives and parents that love me but no one else does. sure they say "someday you'll meet somebody" and i just think why not her, am I not good looking enough, i feel that the special girls are a one shot chance, if i blow it that's it, so i usually play it cool and just become the nice funny guy they'll bend over backwards to do anything, "date him, nah he's just a friend"...just a friend, do they know I want to be more than that, yeah they can go anywhere and have guys like me lining up to get a night alone to get to know them better but me, i feel I've fallen through the cracks, i feel that I'm going to die alone and it's my fault. I wasn't interested in girls the time when i should have been filled with raging hormones driving me to nail my first piece of ass, i was stupid and cared more about whether my full collection of holographic first editions would impress my friends, I feel 10 years behind my actual age, as if I'm experiencing my life at a delayed pace, like shit "where was this horny guy when i was in high school" he would have told those girls that he was interested.

i guess I've got a lot to think about and my life probably seems pretty messed up but...i don't know. if you've read all this, that's cool i don't know if the sentences will fit together properly and make sense, and i don't know what i intended you to get out of this, i just needed someone to listen, sometimes that's all people need, but in this world they can't get the time of fucking day.

EDIT: Fixed the major spelling, grammar and other errors.