"Mum, Dad, I'm not a Muslim any more." My mother looks up sharply, bristling with annoyance. "Don't be ridiculous, of course you are." My father doesn't look up, assuming this is just the latest in a long line of pronouncements about religion that began with me age 10 spending a whole summer with a black scarf on my head to demonstrate my desire to become a Catholic nun. It was a phase that he was convinced would pass, like the Baha'i boyfriend or Bhangra-based Punjabi militancy. "You're still culturally Muslim," he said. I know the subtext of that: believe what you like in your heart but socially don't run around telling family and friends that you've renounced the faith.

In Islam a renunciate is much worse than an infidel. There is no place in heaven for someone who is born into the faith and decides to reject it. You couldn't say you didn't know any better, you purposely stepped away from salvation.

It wasn't that I don't believe in God. I often wish I didn't as atheism is a great deal sexier. How rock n' roll to have the courage to know that you are alone and there is no rhyme or reason for you being here? It is the James Dean of philosophies. But unfortunately I do believe in God just not in a personal God – and I don't believe he's the only one up there.

I wanted three things from my religion:

1. A moral code based on the Oscar Wilde quote "some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go" – strive to be the first kind of person and not the second

2. A profoundly hedonist approach to life

3. Transcendence – be that through ritual or prayer or eating marshmallows in woodland

I gravitated toward paganism, specifically witchcraft. I liked that these were not "people of the book" and their only "book" was one that the follower created him or herself. I liked that there was a whole pantheon of gods and goddesses to engage with; it wasn't worship in the old sense of the word, it was co-creation. The only thing that troubled me about my new tribe was its propensity to want to organise into groups that then try to get mainstream recognition. I quite liked the lack of organisation and/or dogma that paganism represents.

The lack of any structure, hierarchy (as a solitary person I never joined a coven with a priest or priestess), or rules meant that I was free to do as I pleased. I followed the guidance I received in dreams. I accepted and adopted that which felt true to me and rejected that which didn't. I celebrated the solstices and lived by the moon. It was a time of expansion and magic.

My mother started to cope with it better. She is quite a superstitious person and also doesn't believe it is right to denigrate anyone else's religion. Since she didn't get that I only had a loose set of beliefs and no religion, she began treating everything I did as religiously significant. Glasses wouldn't be cleared from my room in case they were part of a spell (usually the stuff congealed at the bottom was wine drunk days ago rather than the blood of her wild imaginings) and there was much careful dusting of my altar. She even became addicted to the occasional (very un-Islamic) tarot card reading.

We had peaceful co-existence until I got my tattoo. I had prepared my parents for the fact that I had a compulsion to get a tattoo, I'd just not let them in on what it was going to be. It was a yantra for the goddess Kali. "I thought you meant you'd get a rose or something," wailed my mother. Then I was "guided" to only eat raw food for seven days after I got the tattoo. My mother stopped talking to me. Finally my dad took us to dinner to try and broker a peace agreement. I ordered a raw salad, my mother's jaw tightened.

"Are you a Hindu now?"

"Nope."

"I see. You know you can't have a Muslim burial now?"

"Yep."

"Have you thought what family will say at your death?"

"I was hoping all you elders would die before me." My mother's face visibly relaxed. She even cracked a smile. "Ah, that's true. God willing."

• The author has used a pseudonym at the request of her parents