Graphic by Lucas Olscamp/The Gazelle

I was 11 when I first became confused about my faith. My grandmother had just passed away and we were flying back to Malaysia for the traditional Buddhist funeral that would be held for the family and friends of the deceased. At this point, we had already been living in Australia for four years. It was the first funeral that I attended, and despite the grief that overcame me for not having been able to say goodbye to my grandmother, I had questions that my curious little mind wanted answered. "Is she being buried? What's cremation? But how do the ashes go to heaven?" But the one response that stuck to me and gnawed at my mind was to the question, "Who do I pray to?" My mother had replied, "Grandma is Buddhist, but you go to church and you're Christian, so you pray to God." And so as the rites of the Buddhist funeral proceeded around me, I prayed to "God up there" for my grandmother's safe passage to heaven.

Most of my family is Buddhist. Growing up in Malaysia, I would always smell the incense burning in the morning and would say a quick prayer before I left home for school. When my family moved to Australia in 2001, things changed. We had left our life back in Malaysia. Our family, our friends, our community. Our support system was my uncle and his family who had already been in Australia for the past ten years. They offered us their friends and their community, who were Christian, as a way to ease into the Australian life.

We started going to a Baptist church a couple of months after our move. My uncle had a group of friends there, all from Malaysia, to which he introduced my mum. One moment we were going to church as an opportunity to socialize, the next thing I knew, we were suddenly Christian and going to Bible study sessions every fortnight. I was being pulled into a religion that I knew nothing of and did not understand.

Throughout this period, there was never a time when I felt truly comfortable. The other children had been going to church for a much longer time than I had. They had grown up in families where it was typical to begin reading the Bible at an early age, albeit the simplified, children editions. Me? I was still struggling to adapt to the new country and culture, while maintaining the lessons that I had learnt from my past experiences. Experiences that had been heavily influenced by Buddhist customs.

Toward the end of high school, I finally decided to tell my mum that I was not a Christian and that I no longer wanted to go to church every Sunday. She insisted that even if I did not believe in Christ, I should at least go to catch up with our family friends. This did not sit well with me. I should not be visiting a place of worship to socialize. I should not be pretending that I shared the same faith as those who went to church. I could not maintain the facade.

It has been a couple of years now since I stopped going to church. I currently do not follow a religion either. Most of my family are Buddhists, some are Christian, but I am neither.

Perhaps in the future I will end up following one of these religions, perhaps not. But if it is to happen, I want it to be of my own decision. I want to have studied it, understood the relevant texts, and found myself agreeing with its principles to declare myself a person of that religion.

When I visited my grandmother's altar on the anniversary of her death, I lit an incense, closed my eyes, clasped my hands and whispered my prayers to my grandmother.