This week I gave up something that had been tripping me up and landing me in the confessional for the last two years or so; something I gave up almost kicking and screaming. Let me explain…
During my spiritual desolation two years ago, I found a way of coping with all I was going through. And I’m just going to say what it was so that a) I can hold myself accountable and b) a this “secret” will no longer have power over me: I stumbled into the world of fan fiction. It, on its own, is not inherently evil or sinful but I got sucked into the world of AO3 where anything goes. Seriously, it’s like the lawless Wild West. While there are great, wholesome stories, many people will share others that either blur the line when it comes to smut/spice or will not caution others about the content and then you will end up unintentionally reading it. Or, in my case, I was so invested in a story before the smut was introduced (or even hinted at) that I would go “well, it’s just part of the story” all because I wanted to see how the story ended. And when you have a vivid imagination and a curiosity… it’s not a great combination if you can’t erase those mental images. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a quick way to land yourself in the confessional.
Of course, it didn’t start off as something bad nor with the intention of ever reading spice, especially since I never had before I was introduced to fan fiction. As a creative person, I enjoyed seeing work from other writers. Some of the stories are also better written than what has been published in the last couple of years. There are plenty of spice-free stories that produce good fruit but the bad outweighed the good. Or, at least, it did in my experience. Those weren’t the problem. It was the addiction I developed to them that was the problem.
Fan fiction became the emotional crutch I didn’t need and should have never gotten attached to. Instead of turning to Christ or prayer during difficult times, I would try to distract myself and disassociate by reading (or sometimes even re-reading) fics. Even the wholesome ones that left me feeling warm and fuzzy were problematic becasuse I knew they would give me a quick dopamine hit instead of dealing with things. I would lose track of time, neglecting prayer time, meal times, and sometimes even sleep. Why? Because I was either so engrossed in a story or had received a notification or a new story and nothing else would matter. And that was a problem. I was not taking care of myself because these stories made me have the good feelings i was craving.
And, of course, when someone is sleep deprived they don’t make the best decisions and that’s when I would make the stupid decisions to not skim over the spice. “Curiosity killed the cat” is an idiom for a reason, folks. I would sometimes read things that I shouldn’t have out of sheer curiosity and then those mental images would stay in my mind for far too long after.
I gave up fan fiction for Lent this year… but the addiction was so strong that I ended up checking on Sundays. Or I’d day “I’m having a terrible health day and this will help my mental health”. Any excuse to check to see if there were any updates to the stories I liked.
Back to the worst of it…
Yes, I know some of you will think I’m a massive hypocrite for speaking out about spice in literature and why it’s not great but please know that I was saying it because I knew what it was like to read it. I knew from experience why someone like me would have issues with it.
I always felt empty and like a shell of a person after I read (or skimmed) spice. I hated the feeling afterwards and would apologize to God for my weak will. I don’t think I gained anything positive from reading any of that. The majority of the time it didn’t add anything to the story. In fact, it felt like it was added just to titillate and/or please the masses.
I also noticed that a lot of was written showed how desensitized we as a society have become to a lot of things that should not be normalized. If a story was written well, people would still complain about the lack of spice, violence, and/or unhealthy relationships. All because we’ve gotten so accustomed to expecting it. Even traditional publishers will ask an author to add spice to their books before they commit to them. When someone (in general) asks whether there’s spice in the Harry Potter books (because they only read books with spice in them) you know we’ve lost the plot.
I’ve read enough of the research to know why spice and violence, especially in fan fiction and women’s literature, can be damaging. It can create these unrealistic expectations about what love, sex, and relationships look like. Some stories glorify and/or try to normalize things like abuse (in all its forms), toxic relationships, lack of boundaries, so many of the -isms, and other more risqué and taboo subjects. It can trigger abuse victims if there are explicitly violent scenes… and, sadly, I saw many “grape” warnings in the tags. For the record, I never touched those fics because of how troubling they are. Soice can also result in a person seeking out things like corn with a p (not today, bots!), physical self-love (if you catch my drift), and other things that go against the commandments and human dignity in general.
And all of that is just on a secular level. When you bring faith into the equation, it can become downright depressing to see how distorted human sexuality (or, at the very least, the view of it) and the dignity of human beings has become and how expected it is in these spaces. I lost count of how many times I thought “why would anyone want to write or read something like this?” during one of my my moments of curiosity-induced weakness.
I understand that not everyone will agree with me, and that’s fine. Everyone has free will and their own beliefs. I’m not here to convince you to act or think like me — I’m here writing why this was not a great place for me and why I needed to cut it out completely from my life.
Beyond the stupid moments of human weakness in which I read spice out of curiosity, fan fiction in general was causing more problems for me than was necessary. And I often felt like God was asking me to give it up completely… and I just couldn’t. I would often feel anxious and a sense of despair just thinking about deleting my account and blocking the website. Even after I would read something that would either disgust me or depress me… or, more often than not, leave me feeling empty and numb… it would only take a minor hiccup in my health or personal relationships to have me fleeing back to fics. Having a healthy coping mechanism isn’t a bad thing. On the contrary, having something you can do to distract from difficult times can be great for your mental health. I was just neglecting myself on all levels and that’s when my coping mechanism became a problem.
This week I finally decided to bite the bullet even though there was one ongoing fic that will probably haunt me for not knowing how it ends. Yes, I’m one of those people who *has to* know how things end after I’ve become emotionally invested in them. At first I was only going to log in if that fic or my favorite writer (who herself told me she would never write spice) uploaded something new. But I felt like God was asking me to quit cold turkey and had to finally do it and trust that He would help me deal with the craziness of my life in healthier ways. I had been saying “I will… but not yet” for too long whenever I’d felt a familiar pang in my heart and my gut. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel like crying deleting my account and using content filters to block the website. Because it very much felt like a toy was taken away from me and I didn’t want to let it go. But I knew I had to and God finally help me get the courage and willpower to do so.
Has it been easy? Not one bit. Quitting cold turkey is never easy but I had more enough examples of why moderation and caution didn’t work for it, especially in this area. I’ve had some incredibly difficult health days where I would lose myself in a fictional world but I’ve managed to do okay without them. I mean, my poor bestie is getting way more texts from me when I’m trying not to spiral but I’m sure I’ll find better ways of coping with these emotionally and mentally taxing days.
In the spirit of trusting God more (as I mentioned in the previous post), I’m just going to leave everything in His hands. It currently feels like it did in the summer of 2006, right before my reversion to the faith. A massive part of my life is over. I’m drowning in the unknown when it comes to my health, especially with all the flare ups and the suspected MCAS being triggered by so many things. And it feels like I’m on the edge of something big but I don’t know what it is. I’m just going to channel 21-year-old Emmy and carry my crosses to the best of my ability and hope God can help me along the way because I have no idea what I’m doing or what exactly He wants me to do going forward.
Anyway, I’m starting to get a migraine so that’s enough screen time for me.
I hope you all had a great week and are having a great weekend.
As always, thanks for reading and God bless!
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