To those of you that commented on part one, and seemed eager for the next part, I apologise for the delay. Steemit can be very time consuming in regards to checking out all the great content and commenting/responding.

If you have not read part one then I would advise that you do so before committing to this, as to understand my motives you will need to understand what happened in the beginning of my life.

---

Atheism, My Saviour

After the incident, my parents announced that they had begun to look for somewhere else to live, outside of London. I had not been the only one of their children to experience more than a young person should, but this story is not about my siblings, so I will stick to my own journey.

For a typical child being told that they're being shipped away to a different location, having to abandon their friends and make new ones, putting up resistance would be the expected response. This was the reaction of several of my siblings, but in my case I raised no objections.

I'd had enough of London-- and the people in it. All it was to me now was a painful reminder of how much I had lost. It had cost me my faith, my self-respect, and most notably; my positive outlook on life. Fortunately, the process of finding a new home and relocating was not too lengthy. Though, I could be wrong. Perhaps it was just the recurrent emptiness I was feeling that blended the days together, making the weeks move faster.

By the time we had moved out of London, a new school term was about to begin. Only two years beforehand, I had been ecstatic about joining a new school. This time around however, I felt indifferent towards the idea of it. I no longer seen it as an opportunity to connect with others, but as a boring passage into adulthood that everyone must suffer through.

On my first day, I was rather surprised by the amount of people who offered their hand in friendship. I had been expecting to make enemies within a few days, such as I had when joining secondary school in London. This was not the case though. There had been one boy, seemingly one of the cool kids, who had found it prudent to test me while playing football.

He approached me without provocation, and began barking hostilities in my face. Very much unlike myself, I struck him before he could have the opportunity to do so to me. I did not put my full power behind the swing. Hurting the boy was not my objective. I merely wanted to demonstrate that if he were expecting to use me as a tool for elevating his social status, it would not be as easy as he may have expected.

Back in London, this act would have been the equivalent of me signing my name in blood on a contract that stated I was now his foe for life. Yet in this case, the result was the complete opposite. I was surprised to find that he too offered his friendship to me, claiming that he was impressed with me standing up for myself. I declined the offer, though little did I know that he would soon become one of my closest friends.

Within the first week at my new school, there were many more people who expressed a willingness to be friends. I chose not to return the sentiment, however. I had expected that to open up and connect with them on a personal level, would only result in them letting me down in some way or another before long. It was the loss of faith in humanity which had led me down a path of voluntary seclusion.

Childhood naivety had me believing that I had already witnessed the very worst of human behaviour back in London. Thinking back on it now, I envy that ignorance. Within a few weeks of my time at the new school, I came to learn that my prior introduction to the world of violence, was nothing when compared to the grand scale of suffering around the Earth.

This realisation would not come as the result of a personal experience of my own. In fact, many millions around the world would receive that same wake up call, by means of the September 11 attacks. I remember watching the catastrophic events on TV. This criminal act was so inconceivable to me, that for minutes I was able to convince myself it was merely a trailer for a new movie-- despite the BBC News logo and scrolling text all over the screen.

When the reality of what had transpired sunk in, accepting humans as destructive by nature--which I had grown to believe over the past year--was no longer enough for me. I now had to understand why. I would soon find the answers I needed to help me rationalize the horrors I had been subjected to.

These answers would come by way of the new school I was attending. It was nothing like the ones I had been placed at before. Those had all been religious-- and I was finished with that silliness. Now I was at a school of science. It even stated so in the title.

At previous schools, the focus had been primarily on the story of Creationism. I remember not if there were any lessons at all on the most common opposition to that narrative. There certainly was at this new school, though. I learned of the big bang theory, astronomy and evolution.

Now, I regret to sound boastful, but at that age I was rather intelligent-- more so than most that I encountered my own age. After completing a short exam, I was placed once again in all the top classes, seemingly providing me with the best opportunity to bolster my knowledge base.

For someone who was so smart, I am surprised at how easily I bought into so much of what I was being taught-- specifically in the realm of physics. In retrospect, it was most likely my desire to comprehend the gross injustices of the world that led me to find faith in the lessons being preached to me.

It was no accident that I chose to use the words faith and preached in this context, for I have adopted the belief that Atheism--which I was in the process of ascribing to--is most certainly a religion. It is also one of the best examples of irony that you could ever find.

For most, a belief in Atheism is accompanied by an air of arrogance. That arrogance often manifests itself in the form of pity towards those that believe in religion.

"Those poor fuckers are delusional thinking that the world was created in seven days. Don't they know that we evolved from apes?"

That is a typical sentiment among Atheists, including myself at that time in my life. The ironic nature of this perspective lies in the fact that many common theories believed by Atheists--and often postulated as proof of religion's invalidity-- require just as much faith to believe in as Creationism.

I didn't know this at the time, nor would I have cared to. I was getting answers, and they were helping me to construct an understanding of the world that could explain why men were so cruel to one another. I learned of how we all came about by chance, and how we evolved into the species we are today through evolution. Most importantly for me, I learned that humans developed to the point we are at today through natural selection-- or as it is more commonly promoted as, survival of the fittest.

Survival of the fittest. This phrase resonated with me when first hearing it. I thought to myself, was this why everyone is so cruel and selfish? Is it merely the primal instinct for survival dictating the actions of humanity?

The man I have become today would say that's not enough of a reason for all this suffering, but the boy I was then needed something to believe in. I chose--no, I forced myself to believe that men acted this way towards one another because they were afraid in the face of their own mortality, and that--based on what I had been learning--we would all be extinct eventually, so why should I care to be anything other than selfish too?

I was an idiot for sure. But, unfortunately it would take me six long--though very exciting--years to shake that poisonous philosophy.

---

---

Still to come (working titles);

• Friends and Foes
• Fuck the System
• High Crimes
• The Search for Truth
• The Road to Redemption
• The True Face Of Evil
• A New Perspective

---

Thank you for reading-

If you deem this post worthy of it, then a resteem to share my story and my life lessons is greatly appreciated.

---

Have a great night, Steemians