1/2 Some background is necessary, but skip to the TL;DR if you don't want to read this part.
I am in my late 20s and I was raised in a non-religious household. About four years ago, I went through a difficult period of my life that made me feel very unsettled with being a "tragic atheist" and I wasn't satisfied with my defaulted moral nihilism. I don't think any of my understanding of reality was in critical error, but the lack of purpose or resolution to things seemed fake and gay (I don't really think any nihilist says "well I make my life's own meaning" with much conviction, personally). So I tried to connect with a few things about my human experience that did seem real or transcendent and that I knew I connected with in way that was exclusively non-material - things I couldn't subject to the scrutiny of utility. I became obsessed with the idea of Beauty as a virtue that shines a light on the things that are not fake and gay and point us towards a truer connection with reality, like a true communion of the human spirit.
I discovered the Orthodox Church through liturgical music. I was deeply moved by Rachmaninoff's Vespers (the USSR Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir production) and I felt more strongly than anything else that this was the most beautiful of the beautiful things I had encountered. I wanted to know what inspired this kind of work. I read up on what Vespers was, what Christianity was, I read a book called "Orthodox Alaska" about modern Saints, I started reading the Bible and watching Bible explanation videos on the internet and even started browsing this board when I learned of it (never before posted). I visited St. Vladimir's Seminary bookstore and picked up a dozen books and read each cover-to-cover. I felt like I was out in the cold night looking through a glass window into a warm and beautiful and kind world that I had never experienced.
I attended my first Orthodox service, a Vespers service, about three years ago. I encountered a guy we'll call Tom who was my age, he sang in the choir, and he was a reader. He welcomed me to the parish and we went out for coffee to talk for a bit. From then on, I developed a great friendship with Tom and his wife and most of the rest of the parish was very welcoming and I was even in the men's group that met during the week. I attended regularly, I went to the entrants class the parish has for study, I practiced a prayer rule, and I really liked the priests as well, but I never really developed a relationship with either of them and neither of them ever went out of their way to check up on me or see how I was doing. Nonetheless, I was still made a Catechumen. This was a little more than a year ago. So at the present time I have been going to this church for three years and have been a Catechumen for a little more than a year.
TL;DR: Nonreligious upbringing, have been going to an Orthodox church for three years and have been a Catechumen for a little more than a year.
For those that are Orthodox, you may be already asking why it is that I have been at the church for so long, withheld from entering the Catechumenate for so long, and have also been a Catechumen for a long time.
The truth is, and this this has been a struggle I have been trying to work out for this whole time, is that I have never personally experienced anything spiritual, important, transcendent, or otherwise confirming an existence of God or the supernatural claims the Church has. After a while, I have concluded that prayer does not work, at least for me. I don't detect anything special is happening during liturgy, like I don't feel the presence of God. And when the contemporary supernatural claims of the Church don't seem verifiable by my own experience, it is difficult to believe the historical supernatural claims of the Church as well. I don't believe that many events in the Bible actually happened, most of all, I don't believe the key point that Jesus died and was resurrected for the remission of our sins. I feel like I can't make myself believe it, either. There are so many holes and doubts and missed connections and false promises that the inconsistencies add up to be too overwhelming. I have cried out in desperation for Jesus to make this clear for me, to rob me of my cursed and unserving intellect if it meant I could just have faith and serve.