Concerning God, what God really meant to me.

God was how I at one time unknowingly defined myself.
For example in my youth the story of Steven, the first martyr (if you don't count Jesus), I'd imagine how I'd react if I were surrounded by a bunch of evil people that demanded I renounce God or die, how would I react?

A naive thought experiment to be sure but one that told me about me not anything at all about a deity. There are many other examples of these kinds of self defining concepts from religion that enhance religious delusions by making the individual define themselves in the light of religious mythology.

In a sense when I was most under the thrall of religion I was like a shadow afraid of the dark because if I lost the light I'd lose my self definition. Now I'm free to explore my own light, I never needed anything to define me.

Nor do I need a religious group to sustain me. Christians taught me that, because I was never accepted fully as an individual there anyway, no matter how much cool aid I drank. I don't need a tribe, as a social being I want to be in a tribe, but as an intelligent being I now know how to contend with living in a world where almost all people spend their lives feeling like outsiders with or without religion.

Sometimes I cringe when I hear the term "atheist community" since I'm not looking for an artificial "Tribe" anymore, and I'll continue to build dynamic temporary tribes with all the people around me regardless of their religious, sexual, political, or ethnic identities.