I have always seen life as a vast, unexplored expanse—an intricate, infinite cosmos where my struggles, questions, and beliefs are the constellations I trace to make sense of it all. For as long as I can remember, I’ve walked this path of curiosity and defiance, weighed down by the chains of expectations, the harsh whispers of judgment, and the crushing weight of conformity.

They called me names: pagan, witch, inhuman. All because I refused to conform to their conforminities, to their truths. I questioned where they were comfortable. I doubted what they demanded I accept. As a child, Sunday school left me with more questions than answers. Where were the giants? Why had God stopped walking among us? What became of the Garden?

Then, I grew up, and the world opened before me, vast and mysterious. I discovered wonders that both thrilled and haunted me: the pyramids of Giza, standing as if defying time; the Mayan temples, etched with stories of gods and stars; the bones of ancient creatures, silent witnesses to an Earth unrecognizable to us now. Dinosaurs! They ignited my imagination and further unraveled the simple truths I’d been taught.

On the stones and tablets of forgotten civilizations, I saw fragments of stories, echoes of beliefs, whispers of gods and origins. So many religions, so many variations of humanity’s attempt to explain our existence, all with similar threads but distinct patterns. Who am I to say which is true—or if any are? I do not judge their faiths; I only seek to understand.

And so, I left religion but not belief. I still belief in the spiritual. Like Einstein, I believe in a spirit that harmonizes all things, a force that flows through the cosmos, uniting the vast and the minute. This is no accident, no whim of chance. We are specks of something greater, placed here to exist, to discover, to question.

But I choose freedom—absolute and unshackled. I reject the frameworks built to confine me, the chains forged by conquerors and wrapped in the guise of divine truth. I see religion as a system imposed, a tool to bind the mind and spirit. A wise saying once echoed in my thoughts:

“Nearly all religions were brought to people and imposed on people by conquerors, and used as the framework to control their minds. If you are a child of God, and God is a part of you, then in your imagination, God is supposed to look like you. When you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoner of that other people.”

I refuse to be anyone’s prisoner. I refuse to bend to the chains of norms, traditions, education or beliefs that no longer serve me.

Now, I walk my own path, where wonder and doubt coexist. The universe is my cathedral, its stars my guides. I choose to question, to create, to seek freedom not as the absence of structure but as the presence of choice. In every battle I fight—against life’s struggles, against judgment, against the crushing weight of conformity—I find fragments of truth. And in those fragments, I find myself.

Just As I Am