I believe that there will be nothing after death, and that is good. I used to feel that there was a higher power. There had to be a nebulous being that would reach across the galaxies to effect change on Earth. I used to wonder what would happen after my death and after the death of my loved ones, thinking that there had to be something, that the end of life could not simply mean the end of awareness. I went to church every Sunday as a child until I finished sixth grade. I always listened attentively to the sermons and services given by our congregation's incredibly caring pastor. She always seemed so genuine and nice, so therefore I wanted to believe everything that she said. My parents didn't bring me to church to force a religion on to me; instead they wanted me to be exposed to a moderate form of the Christian religion. They grew up in that fashion. My parents never forced their beliefs onto me, so I just listened to the sermons and thought about them.

As I grew older, I became more scientifically-minded. I absorbed the lectures of my science teachers and realized that everything they said made a concrete form of sense. I listened to what my social studies or reading teachers said, and I was struck by the fact that different teachers said unique and sometimes contradictory things. I came to realize that what passed for religion was often just one person's interpretation of an ever-changing topic. The nebulous being felt my scrutiny increase, and withered. I couldn't wrap my head around how something like religion that seemed so surreal andoutlandish could be reality, especially when everyone who talked about it had slightly different versions.

As I thought about this more, I found that I didn't have any real belief in a higher power. As I thought this, I felt the nebulous being disappear wistfully. I never felt anything that I couldn't explain during the many sermons I sat through, but I wasn't unhappy there. Often I felt that it was time wasted, but I never argued against going. My parents set an arbitrary age at which I didn't have to go to church anymore, and since then, I never went back. When I stopped going, I never felt any sort of absence or emptiness, so I finally realized that there was nothing. There was no higher power, nothing after death. For some reason, this comforted me. I realized that I never wanted to have an eternal afterlife, even if it was like the Christian Heaven. It relieved me that there is nothing past death, because I could never truly understand anything else. I took comfort in knowing that I would simply cease to exist after my life's end.