I grew up experiencing God as a loving Father who was always there, unseen but protecting me. But that experience eventually faded away, and I'm not sure why. There were emotional traumas that happened, and I suspect they had a lot to do with it.
Did God Leave Me?
The same thing happened to me, starting just before my eleventh birthday. In my case, I had started believing things I had been told about God that are simply not true. God always spoke the truth to me, which was wonderful. But when I insisted on believing a lie, He didn't come to tap me on the shoulder and confront my refusal to see what was real. Doing so would have interfered with my free will. Instead, He simply wasn't there and simply would not participate in a non-truth.
I falsely assumed my lack of awareness of His presence meant I'd "sinned," that I'd done something terrible that drove Him away. And believing this escalated the problem due to this also being an untruth. The more I felt guilty, the less I felt His presence; the less I felt His presence, the more I felt painfully guilty. On and on it went in an ever-growing downward spiral that lasted year after year.
I think a lot of people have this exact same problem, whether they are conscious of it or not. We read that "God is truth," and that's a fact. We also read that "God cannot look upon sin", but I think it more accurate to say that "God cannot become involved in any kind of deception", because He already knows the entire truth.
So many people around me have gotten caught up in this same kind of problem. For me, the answer was to let go of everything I'd been taught over the years (which can be a very scary thing to do) and sincerely ask to be shown the truth. Doing so changed my life for the better on every level, and I'm confident God will likewise answer anyone who asks the same if they are genuinely willing to totally let go of the lies and do so without holding anything back.
It can be tremendously helpful to share this process with someone who has a strong inner connection with you, someone who is not caught up in the lies that block you from seeing the truth they are able to view so easily. In fact, you may be able to grasp the truth directly through sensing their awareness of it. Like the poetic statement explains: "When you wear leather sandals, it seems the whole world is covered with leather—until you meet someone with bare feet."