My home was not abusive, but everything else in your story rings totally true with me, having experienced many of the same kinds of things.

My pastor father even told stories about conducting exorcisms, casting out, in his view, literal demons from possessed people.

I think he later realized he'd gone too far with some of that nonsense, and my mother castigated him for scaring the shit out of us kids by telling us stories about it, but none of that tamped down the terror I felt.

My terror of demons was completely bound up in my existential horror at the thought that most humans ever born were screaming in hell.

I believed completely in the Baptist religion my parents brought me up in. I hated it and feared it passionately. I completely believed that God was a sadistic monster I had to to fear and obey at all cost. I had trouble sleeping properly for a couple of years.

The relief I felt when I realized it was all just a crock of shit fill me with such joy that I still vividly remember the epiphany I had one night in bed at 16 years old.

When I'm feeling particularly stressed, that memory is a happy place I go to for relief.