Dear Trevor,
There are some very good bits of counsel in the tread above. If I may leave with you a few points to consider based upon what you have shared so far, and let me add my own hope that you will keep the memory of Church in your heart and at least an ember of faith…or a hope for faith burning and that you will from time to time return to the Divine Liturgy and to the fellowship of Orthodox Christians at your parish.
1. Growing up more, being more comfortable in your own skin.: On the whole a good thing. However being able to be honest with yourself about who you are is not the same thing as being willing to take up the burden and responsibility of becoming who you should be.
2. Faith being in the head. I must disagree here. Belief in God is not an activity of intellection. There is a question perhaps you are ready to explore in more depth…and hopefully your exploration will include what the Fathers and Saints have to say on the matter. The question is this…how do we know what we know? What are the "organs" of knowledge. The modern materialist world view acknowledges nothing as being real that is not rooted in sense knowledge and intellection about sense knowledge. Our thoughts and emotions are only so much biochemistry. We only know via our senses and through the neural activity of our brains. As Fr. Tom Hopko might put it…in this view we are essentially no more than copulators and calculators. Orthodoxy though teaches we know some things via our heart…not the blood pump, but a part of us which might share the same geography, but lie much deeper in our non fleshly bodies. Just as our bodily senses correspond to the world they are designed to interact with and are a part of (light, sound, taste, touch, scent) so the heart corresponds to and perceives spiritual things, particularly it perceives God. In the estimation of the fathers this perception is superior to the rational mind which is naturally it's servant not it's master. Unlike the natural mind and our natural sense organs, it doesn't "figure things out". It experiences and in that experience…knows. It is directly perceptive.
If our heart is hardened, closed, asleep, scattered, deluded…our perception is muted or even nonexistent…like being blind or deaf. Consider this by way of analogy.
If you had to describe the taste of honey to someone who has never seen or tasted honey before how would you communicate that knowledge. How many books on sugars and nectar and micronutrients and viscosity would communicate the taste of honey? How many lectures? How many slide shows? How many testimonials? How many spoonfuls? The taste of honey is only communicated though tasting. Only the organ dedicated to tasting conveys that knowledge. Now, having tasted honey, all the books, lectures, notes, videos, slideshows, and testimonials have meaning…have a context in your experience that permits you to understand and be part of that circle of knowledge a part of that conversation. Now it is possible to trust the reports you've read about the existence of and sweetness of honey without having tasted it yourself. It is possible to parrot a great deal about the taste and sensation of honey without having sampled it at all…and just as easily you can come to doubt, because on both sides of the issue only your mind has been engaged…like flipping a switch +A or -A but still |A| still just a bit of intellection…still just sifting and evaluation one bit of abstraction against another.
This whole realm of "how do we know" is called gnosiology. The problem with limiting gnosis to our material senses and rational mind is that there is no honest way to account for the honey tasters. If you feel up to it read the lives of people like St. Seraphim of Sarov, Fr. Arseny, Elder Porphyrios, St. Silouan, St. Paisos…just to name a very few. You have to deal with accounts (many of the witnesses of which are still living) of the uncreated light, miraculous healings, knowing a person's heart in great detail…their whole life even,unfailing prophecies, seeing hidden things in the earth, bending space and time (Elder Porphyrios). How do you explain these people? What lengths do you have to go to interpret their narrative in such a way as to dismiss these things as varieties of mass hallucination, psychosomatic healings, trickery, and pure fables. How many accounts have to be dismissed as lies or delusions in order to deny that these people were in touch with and communicative of depth/kind of reality that most were routinely oblivious to?
Do these people, their lives, and what they meant cease to be real and have meaning because we have changed our opinions on theology…on the reports of sugar science and honey tasting that we only know in books and articles and not in experience. What do we do with the honey tasters…for they no longer fit our preferred model of the universe? Here…make sense of this life…explain it if there is no God…or at best as distant uninvolved one. Consider who you will have to call a liar, what you cannot "believe" because it is not "rational" even though the witness to these things present you with their testimonies. There is more to us than intellection and sense knowledge. There is the heart and what it can see and know if opened in the light of God's grace.
http://www.oodegr.com/english/biblia/Porfyrios_Martyries_Empeiries/perieh.htm3. I don't feel it anymore so it must not have been real. So…is rain not real because you find yourself walking in the desert and no longer in the rain forest? Many saints and father's speak of seasons dryness and doubt. It is an ancient affliction. We are all keen and swoony over the breads and fishes bits and the sermon on the mount. The walking on water parts are pretty cool too. However Jesus instruction did not center on our undertaking the creation of bread and fish, walking on water, or making cool insightful speeches. He said His followers were expected to take up their cross to follow Him. Crosses have only one purpose…to kill us. Moreover no man can crucify himself, another must do it for us. That's not pretty talk that makes therapists all misty eyed. To the modern world such notions are barbaric and masochistic (and not in the current cool it's ok if its consensual kind of way). Are we to love God only if He give us candy and makes everything easy for us and supplies us with a constant barrage of novelty and self actualization? What about when He gives us dryness, suffering, hardship? What if for His sake we become as the very offscouring of the earth? Though we are crushed and demoralized, do we not still find our knees and stretch our our hands and say "The Lord giveth, the Lord, taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." What kind of love is it that only loves when its easy breezy? How do we come to the place of revelation where we can lift up our eyes to God and say, "I know that my redeemer liveth, and I shall see him in my flesh," unless we are cut off from all but God in the desert of our lives? What can the world offer you that will enable you to pray with St. Nicholas, "Bless my enemies O Lord and multiply them." I do not say this to "guilt" but to have you consider that after 2 years or so of "feeling good" maybe the Lord thought some time in the desert would be helpful sorting things out…maybe the problem is not that "it was all in your head" but in the story…the confabulation you have created to "explain" why your feelings changed and now see faith as a head trip and no longer a heart journey.
4. I think there is grace in your journey…even in this. It is good to be able to soberly evaluate your life and your choices. It is good to be purposeful in what you follow as your guiding light. One thing I think you've seen is that perhaps a significant portion of your earlier religious life was rooted in a sort of novelty. At 15, part of the natural course of adolescence is to separate from one's parents to search out and forge your own identity by such lights as you have. One modern expression of that is changing religions to something that suits you better (I did it). "You find the truth" and it its great truth until the new novelty "truth" comes along. I think part or your current mode is as much a novelty to you as your faith was a few months back. It will get likely get old and your feelings towards it will change too. Will you go back to Orthodoxy, to something else, a non Christian faith…to spiritual but not religious (whatever that is besides narcissism with a yoga mat and a bouquet), or a new found enthusiasm for atheism (either sweet tempered or ill tempered…whichever is the best fit)? God knows?
At least now, God willing, that you return to the faith, it will be a sober decision rooted in a deeper experience of life and a deeper knowledge of yourself…not just of who you are, but who you hope to be.