Salam,
I've never really written anything about my conversion this much public before. So for the respect of my family I won't write about them, it's hard enough for them to accept my conversion as it is.
I've been an active practising Christian since I was a child. Baptised twice, was in church every Sunday, really believed in everything and got all my opinions in life from Christianity. I was in a Christian school for many years as a kid. On this Christian school we got to learn about the other religions in a way that they are really wrong and bad, specially Islam is such a bad religion with people who will never find the true way in life. I believed in it and didn't really care since I had my own religion and didn't need anything else. Also there lived no Muslims in my village where I lived, no black people either. So I never got used to different cultures and religions from the start. But when I was 15 I started to wonder about a question that always came up in my head. I wondered how me, my family and all Christians I knew could say that we are the only ones who are right and everyone else are wrong, when there are so many other religions in the world. It's just because we lived in a Christian country and took what existed there. Still I never discussed about this with anyone. Instead I went out on Internet forums and places to find people of other religions to talk to, specially the ones called "Muslims" because I've heard these people are like animals with no feelings at all and they are people sent from the Devil. I didn't get a good start with Muslims on the Internet, just found people calling themselves Muslims but were not practising, just mostly being bad persons and talking unappropriate. Still I didn't want to give up, I wanted to find some female Muslims too because of the thing that I've heard Muslim women are treated really bad and most of them wish they were dead. Something inside of me made me keep looking for a way to find Muslims to talk to. It took a while before I found the Muslims I wanted to hear from, the good Muslims who actually wanted to tell me the truth about Islam, not the bad Muslims who lived like any persons who just lived from their own desires. I spent some time talking on the Internet in private with these persons. When we started to talk religion I still protected my own religion much. I knew a lot about Christianity but still I somehow always lost in every discussion I had. So I started to wonder, and to be able to discuss better I felt I had to learn more about Islam myself to know more about both sides. At the same time I wondered a lot about Islam too because of the fact that all prejudices I had since before about oppression, hate and other bad things in Islam weren't true. So when I started to read about Islam on the Internet, I was 18 years by then, at the same time I found a blog who was written by a convert to Islam. I started to ask her questions and she always answered until she gave me a link to a safe forum for female converts to Islam. Through this forum I got the rest help I needed with all my questions, I got Islamic homepages and explanations on everything and I got to know many real Muslims who could tell how life as Muslim was. I always asked myself why so many had lied to me. But also now I was wondering why Islam seemed so much more true than Christianity in everything that I read. Mostly I asked myself why Muslims follow the rules in the Quran, while Christians don't follow the rules in the Bible. When I asked Christians it they told me that Jesus came and took away the old rules, but me myself I knew Jesus said in the New Testamente that he didn't come to take away the law. So I didn't understand anything anymore and I felt more and more that Islam was the true way of life. It had everything from start to end and it was practised the way it should be. I had always been conservative so I liked the rules in Islam a lot. It took me 5 months from when I joined the forum and got help with all my wonders, til I in February this year converted to Islam alone in my room. I felt I had to convert, what if I died the day after? At least I had to convert even if I couldn't practice Islam at all because of my family. Because of some personal reasons I knew I had to hide my conversion for maybe a long time. And in the start it was okay. I was new in Islam and I didn't want to do any big changes more than stop eating pork and dress more covering. Still it was cold outdoors so it was no problem. In the summer it became harder and harder both to dress covering and to not bathe and to make everyone understand this. They didn't understand and I felt really depressed all weeks when I had to do things I didn't want to do. In August I moved to my own apartment in another city because I started university at the same time. By this I could start pray five times per day which I hadn't been able to do before and I could live my own life better and learn more about Islam without hiding everything I do on the computer everytime someone comes and just two months after I moved I took on the hijab that I had been longing for for so long time. Short said it didn’t go well when my family found out. Inshallah it will be better in future, right now I just say alhamdulillah for living my own life and for that I am a Muslim.