I had a fairly rough childhood and was raised by my father who was agnostic. Since he never argued for God to me I then became an atheist fairly early on (probably defining myself as such by the time I was 12 or 13 because religious people were "deluded idiots who are ruining this country, etc." and because of the "evidence" to the contrary as described by our school system.) I was never accepted by my peers throughout most of my post-stepmother years (my stepmother from when I was 7 to 9 years old was unbearably strict and emotionally abusive) which was a stark contrast to the kid I was before she was in my life (a very open, friendly, innocent, loving kid who could make friends with anyone). Because of the things that had happened during those years I probably gained about 10 years of age in cynicism and hate toward people for a good while, but this was masked by my overall happy demeanor towards the people that accepted me (those who didn't I absolutely loathed, the "popular" kids and such.) This lasted throughout all my middle school years up until High School when I began to really desire acceptance from my peers. This included the common "scene" dressing and skinny jeans and underage drinking / partying / drugs, conformity to peer pressure, etc. I had many horrible failure relationships with many people and had a hard time even starting new friendships for quite some time because I was so incredibly judgemental and elitist about who I did and did not befriend, all for the wrong reasons.
So the group of friends I had accumulated were more party / drinking friends that I had no real discernable emotional attachment to and at that point I still had no real reason to know better since these were the only kinds of friends I had had. I've always been a thinker and going forward from these wasted days I began to notice patterns both in my behavior in others that I found appalling but I had no real moral ground to defend my position since my position rested mostly on gut feelings and shame. I was incredibly insecure and when shot down by my peers regarding how I felt, I kept it bottled up, only eeking it out every once in a while in my music but mostly keeping it inside. This tore me up existentially pretty badly and kept me in my constant loop of self-destruction. I got my job at Costco in 2008 and was making far more money than I had ever made before working at Jersey Mike's for minimum wage so I was suddenly capable of buying myself the clothes I wanted, the things I wanted, the drugs I wanted, and still I felt empty. I felt like the "American Dream" I had finally seen a bit of was some kind of sick joke because any enjoyment I felt was purely temporary. Some of the joy became regret the next day (buying 200-300 worth of clothes at once only to realise that I needed to start saving up to move out and live on my own, or at least do something productive with the resources I had). So the cycle continued, on and on and on. The first glimpse I had of light in terms of God and Jesus was meeting my coworker Jeremy who was both incredibly intelligent (which I adored) and incredibly faithful to Christ (which confounded me, as he was so utterly intelligent. I thought "How can this man be so incredibly bright but completely deluded?") Every question or accusation I hurled at him was met with a well-thought and measured response that he was happy to provide.
A few months later (after having a supposed 'religious experience' on Mushrooms that did absolutely nothing for me in a matter of days) I met two Christian musicians / business owners that loved my beats and wanted to have me on board with them to make music with them and travel the world, spreading the Gospel and helping the poor and unfortunate. I, however, eventually abandoned them calling them "cultists" because their faith was so strong and their reasoning so totally against the presuppositions I had held for an incredibly long time. This was even after being saved and coming to terms with Christ. I could not trust them because I did not ask them enough. My big breakthrough was watching TD Jakes sermons and reading "Mere Christianity" by CS Lewis in two days. That cemented me in at least being a Theist, but I wasn't completely convinced of Christ's lordship quite yet. I had my reservations about it. Months later after abandoning those two they called me up out of the blue and asked me honestly to come back to work with them. Since then they had moved down to California and were doing well keeping the word and getting things started, I could at least believe that they were capable of doing something with what little they had. After watching "The Case for Christ," "The Case for Faith," and "The Case for a Creator," and going over inumerable apologetics resources like CARM.org and other books by CS Lewis, I finally opened my heart to Christ. That story is told in my song "Christ is Lord" on my SoundCloud (http://soundcloud.com/darbyjanssen/the-victor-christ-is-lord).