Religion is something I've struggled with for a very long time. I was raised in a family that went to Catholic church every Sunday and prayed before each meal. I was baptized, received communion and confirmed as a Catholic; and for a good chunk of my childhood I accepted this.

Yet I knew deep down that there was always something missing. As a naive, young girl willing to accept the beliefs of my parents as my own, I chalked this up to me not being a strong enough believer. I needed to pray harder, and so I did.

As I grew and matured and began to see the world through my own eyes, I started to really internalize this religion. I turned to it in my deepest sorrows, praised it in all of my triumphs and practiced an all around strong faith that anyone would be proud of. I believed that there was someone watching over me, protecting me and the ones I loved. I had faith that the world was beautiful because God made it so, and that I was blessed to be saved by his everlasting grace.

Until one day this all changed for me.

I won't get into the details of it all, but there was a period in my life where I prayed harder than I ever had before for someone who deserved all of the happiness in the world. I thought that if I prayed harder, longer and more, that it would be enough. I thought that God would see what an amazing person this was and that he would have mercy on him. I thought that if someone could possibly be that good and pure, they could never deserve a fate so cruel. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

A beautiful life was lost, and I could not make any sense of it. I saw so much hurt, so much confusion, and so much pain from it that I just couldn't understand. Everyone kept saying, "It's God's plan. Everything he does, he does for a reason. Have faith." But I just couldn't seem to buy into that.

I didn't see how the hurt, the confusion and the pain were doing anyone any good. As hard as I tried--and I really did try--I just couldn't accept that God could ever do something so terrible. So I turned on my faith.

I stopped praying. I stopped listening in church. I stopped believing that I had someone out there who was looking out for me and my loved ones keeping us safe. For the first time in my life I came to terms with the very real possibility that there wasn't something bigger out there controlling the fate of the universe.

Now I know how cliche this probably sounds. A girl loses faith because someone she knows passes away and now she's just a lost soul. Poor girl.

But it really is so much more than that. That feeling I had as a young girl, that feeling of something missing, it had always been there. Deep down I always knew that Catholicism was just not the faith for me, and I truly think it took this huge, traumatic thing to happen for me to realize that.

Though through it all, I still have hope. Now when I am facing my deepest sorrows, I turn to my friends for support. Their unconditional love could get me through anything. In my greatest triumphs, I turn to my family. It is them who have provided me with everything I have and have made all I do possible. I stopped living a life that I thought would please a higher being and started living one that would please those around me and make this world a better place.

Now I won't lie, deep in my heart I still would like to think that there is something out there... Whether it's a God, a puppet master or a million angels guiding us all through the great journey of life, I have hope that one day I will meet this supreme being and they will smile on me.

For now though, all I can do is lead a life that will make my parents proud. All I can strive to be is a person that my older sister speaks highly of and that little sister looks up to. All I can do in this life is show others what love and acceptance look like through my genuine actions to make the lives and world around me better.

In doing these things I have an undying hope that no matter what it is up there looking down on us, it will see that all I have done I have done with a good heart and accept this as enough. Though I am faithless for now, I will never lose this hope.