Sure, this is part of "finding yourself", but as I'm sort of required to (Vatican II and all that), "what went wrong?".
I will answer your question, because really, I've been waiting for someone in life to ask me this.
My own religious convictions almost completely coincided with my mother's, although we developed independent of each other. We struggled over the same problems, came up with the same conclusions, and ultimately discarded God at around the same time. I believe that she had a great influence on my thinking in every aspect, not just limited to religious ideas. I would often overhear her in heated debates with her friends, and I listened attentively like any good student. If I have anyone to thank for me being where I am today, it is her.
As an elementary school student, I started out a forced Christian, being that my mother thought it was a good idea to go to church every Sunday. She went to the sanctuary for church, and I went to Sunday school. As her interest in Christianity increased, she started attending classes given by some of the church patrons, including the pastor. A few years later, she began to question the faith, so she started studying religious supplement books and the like. After tons of writing, debating, and an exorcism of God, she's into Wicca now. My religious strife, on the other hand, was much more internal and private.
I exorcised God at around age 14. I felt that I really didn't need an extra abstraction that I couldn't explain hanging above my head. If happiness is faith in God, then my own happiness is faith in the world around me. I don't believe in God; I believe in quarks, leptons, magnetic forces, and reciprocal determinism. It was in these scientific endeavors that I saw real beauty. One can go outside on a cool, fall day and feel it in the air. I see the beauty of nature in the colors of its leaves, the songs of the birds, and in the warmth of the sun. And what was really the most beautiful thing of all is that I could explain all of this, devoid of any disembodied spirits or concepts of free will. I am now truly free in terms of thought. I didn't give up God; God just became effectively irrelevant. I didn't need him anymore, and now, there is no one on this earth who can convert me back. It's logically impossible.
There's more to it, I think, but I'm sure you get it.