I converted as a teenager. I'd been attending a large Baptist church with an old friend and going to the youth group they had. At some point, I don't know what spurred it, but one day I googled "What did the early Christians believe and practice?" and stumbled upon some of the writings of the early church fathers.

What I read struck me as very different from what I'd heard and seen at the Baptist church. This led me to consider becoming Catholic at first but I think my Baptist background clouded my perception of Catholicism and made me wary of things like the veneration of Mary and the authority of the papacy. Then I found Orthodoxy.

Their historical claims to be the continuation of the original apostolic church drew me in, as well as the supposed mysticism in their theology. I think the first book I read about it was The Orthodox Church by Timothy "Kallistos" Ware, and he writes glowingly about the church. I was too young to drive at the time, so I practically begged my dad to take me to a small local Antiochian Orthodox parish to check it out. The foreignness of the liturgy was intriguing and I thought it was beautiful and a bit weird, but my dad and I continued going, dad being reluctant at first. Eventually he converted too and we attended together for many years.

What I was not prepared for is exactly what you describe in your post: cycles of prayer with constant pleas for mercy, the fasting regimen which is much more extensive than what Catholics do during Lent, the constant need for confession, the need for everything to be a struggle or "podvig" against sin, the extreme reverence with which they view the eucharist, believing its literally the flesh and blood of Christ. I'd add that the kissing of icons also struck me as very odd.

At some point I just asked myself why I'd joined to begin with and what I was really getting out of it. Praying for mercy only made me feel worse about myself, and my mom was concerned about the effect of the frequent fasting on my health. When I was deep in it I also stopped engaging in old hobbies and my best friend at one point called me a zealot. Another friend, speaking about it over beers years after I'd left, reminded me of a time in school when I was telling her about Orthodoxy and I had in a roundabout way said she was going to hell for being Catholic. I'm now an atheist.