My dad is a very strange man. I need to say this for everyone to understand my confusion. He basically believes we are aliens, long story short. I've always believed very heavily in evolution and he says it's all false, that we're aliens. My grandparents were never very happy with him since they were fairly strict when it come to their religion.

Meanwhile, my mom is Roman Catholic. If two people could be more different I would be surprised. My understanding is that my dad never shared any of these alien-related beliefs prior to being married, and mom thought she was marrying an Eastern orthodox man. I don't know if it would have mattered but most people need an explanation as to how they ended up married.

Then there is me. I believe we are made up of energy, and that that energy does have to go somewhere. From there, I do not know. I want to believe we are reincarnated, that we get another chance at things, and then another. I just don't know how that would work? I have inklings in my mind of how I would like things to be, but I don't know what I think things are.

When I watched my grandfather die, I couldn't understand. It conflicted with my belief that there is no after life, in heaven or otherwise. When I watched it I wondered where his mind went. Where his principles, paradigms, personality, etc went? I know it all has to do with how you're brought up and how your brain works, in my mind, but I wanted to know where his specifically went. It couldn't just die - that doesn't make sense. But then maybe I'm looking at it too personally and failing to see clearly. Would I be thinking the same things if I had watched my best friend's grandfather die?

It was really traumatizing so maybe I'm taking that trauma and making it some internal feud about whether I'm going to hell or not. I feel very irrational. I grew up in a hospital, basically, so I saw a lot of people die, children actually. However, I never saw them "packaged" for transfer. I can't believe I stayed in the room to make sure they didn't hurt him or steal his jewelry. He died at home. We waited all weekend and I got to see him literally drown in his own fluid. I stayed awake for 4 days waiting. I never cried once. I didn't cry when they took him, I didn't cry at the visitation, and I didn't cry when I did the eulogy. At the end of the eulogy I almost burst into tears but my dad grabbed me and hugged me and I kept it down. It took me two months to cry but the entire time I was trying to convince myself to be Christian so that I could have some hope of seeing him again.

I feel like I'm betraying what I know with what I want or what I think. That might be offensive but I'm just so damn confused. I'm not intending to be rude I just don't understand.