TRIGGER WARNING
Being a liberal bisexual atheist growing up in a conservative area is never fun. Luckily, it wasn't until I moved away that I realized that I was, in fact, a liberal bisexual atheist. I always was, or at least was well on my way as a young child; I just didn't know it until much later. I suppose I really did believe in God to begin with, but I remember being small when I first started doubting that faith. Mind you, doubting doesn't automatically make you an atheist, but it does make you a skeptic, and that's the first step in that direction. I remember asking a lot of questions about things that just didn't make any sense, and getting a lot of flack about it when the adults couldn't or wouldn't provide satisfactory answers. I was confused and wanted clear, logical answers. But religion defies logic, and so those who held on to that faith couldn't give me what I needed, and their frustration manifested itself in hostility and anger.
For me, belief in god was always governed by fear; so was belief in adult superiority. Naturally, I was constantly fearful growing up, and as I began to lose that fear, I also began to question those beliefs. Eventually, people (even children) begin to have nothing left to lose, so they soon realize there is nothing more to fear. This is why you should never govern anything with fear. Once that fear is gone, so is all the power it ever held over them, and any authority that went along with it is gone. Once I'd gained a sense of self that didn't involve constant fear and self-doubt, a couple of things happened. They happened so gradually that I can never really be sure when things changed, but after a few years away from my abusive parents and experiencing life on my own, I began to realize two things. The first is that I owed my parents nothing and therefore could cut them off completely, which is probably the primary reason I'm still alive today. The second is that god-belief was no longer necessary to my survival, and it was actually doing me more harm than good.
Now, you can't just decide to change your beliefs just because you want to. Wanting to believe a thing doesn't make it true. Wanting something not to be true doesn't make it false, either. What it does do is make you more susceptible to being convinced by others, but there have to be reasons for holding whatever beliefs you cling to, and reasons for discarding whatever beliefs you once held. If those reasons aren't really convincing, no amount of wanting can change your mind.
When I was a child, I wanted more than anything to believe there was a god up there who loved me enough to rescue me from my misery, and so I waited a long time for any evidence of this to present itself. I prayed with fervent anguish for something to happen, anything to get me out of the living hell that was my life. And if you can't honestly believe that my life was a living hell back then, you have never been a helpless child in an abusive home. It makes me happy that you never had to go through that, but at the same time you have to realize that I really, truly wanted it to end. I was willing to kill myself to end it, but first I wanted to give god a chance to fix it just in case there was another way out. And there were plenty of opportunities for a benevolent, omnipotent being to do this; unfortunately, none of those opportunities presented themselves to a little helpless, frightened girl.
There are actions I did take to try to get out, but I was young, and naive, and scared. The first and most ridiculous was riding my bike to my Aunt and Uncle's house down the street from where I lived. Obviously, they called my parents to let them know where I was, and a sleepover was the best case scenario in this instance. It took a couple of times for me to realize this was not going to be the answer. Next, I tried my grandparents with the same result. Their house was farther away, but apparently distance didn't make the difference back then. YAY family! In hindsight, I feel the stupidity of those early attempts at getting out of the situation. But I was an ignorant child, and the only thing I can really say is that Rome wasn't built in a day, and I had to learn what wouldn't work before I could learn what would.
As I got older, I began to realize that anyone who knew my parents would automatically try to contact them. I mean, that's what you do when someone's kid is "lost", and that's what they thought I was. Back then, I had no concept of what was wrong that I could verbalize, and all I could say was that I was unhappy and I wanted to run away. Lots of kids want to run away when they're young; not all of them are abused. Unfortunately, I didn't know what "abuse" was; I didn't understand the concept well enough to communicate that that was what was going on.
As I got older, my escape attempts got more sophisticated, but it was gradual. I tried living in a tree house, but eventually it would rain or I'd get cold and hungry. But I was happy while it lasted, finding a book to read on my own without worrying about the future. When I got too uncomfortable to stay there I ended up going home. Where else was I going to eat and stay warm? My mother barely noticed I'd been gone.