I relate to this so much! I'm older than you, but I was raised in mainstream Baptist churches, and the trauma was very real.

Long before I knew I was gay, which added a whole new wrinkle to things, I watched a film in church about the End Times, called "A Thief in the Night." It was about the Rapture, and it included scenes of people screaming in hell, being tormented by worms and flames.

I have been raised to believe that most people go to hell, except for those who've accepted Jesus into their hearts, and because I went to public school, I had to deal with the supposed reality that most of my classmates would scream in eternal agony after they died.

My extended family were all Roman Catholic, so I had to live with the agony that my loved ones would share that same torturous fate.

My parents and the congregations of the various Baptist churches we attended over the years seem delighted that they were among the elect few who would escape eternal conscious torture, but the idea traumatized me so badly that I went through about a 2-year period where I was too terrified to fall asleep at night.

I would crawl into my parents' bad when I was about 10 years old, sobbing that I wasn't sure that I was saved. (I had never heard the "still small voice" that you're supposed to hear, and they didn't have any way to explain to me that nobody actually hears it. None of us knew that I was autistic and had a very difficult time distinguishing metaphor from factual statements.)

I remember walking home from school sometimes, seeing an unusual cloud formation in the sky, and just sobbing in fear. Once, I fell to the ground and grabbed onto a tree and held on for dear life. My mother came looking for me, found me at the base of that tree, full of concern for me. But I couldn't explain to her what was wrong, because that would mean that I would have to tell her that I hated her God for being so cruel and evil.

When I was 16, it finally occurred to me (at night in bed) that it was all just a crock of superstitious shit. I stopped hating the Christian God, and I started realizing that it was the Christian people who were cruel and evil.

Mostly, though, I felt such a freeing sense of happiness and relief.

At breakfast the next morning, my mother gave me a funny knowing look, and she asked me if I was in love.

Once again, I couldn't tell her why I was feeling how I felt, which in this case was the greatest possible joy in knowing that God is not real.