I have always been a happy girl... No, joyful would be a better word for it. I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart as my Lord & Savior when I was only a kid, and actively pursued a relationship with him for years and years, growing strong in my faith and being consistently renewed by God's goodness and his thoughtfulness towards us, his children. (Psalm 100:5 — For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.)
But then the world changed. Covid scoured the planet, civil unrest shook my nation. Division and isolation ran rampant, along with indulgent negativity and increasingly dark subjects losing their taboo in casual conversations. Because of this, I found myself spiraling into a pit of crippling depression that debilitated me in every way for the entire month of September 2020. I would go days without eating, or only eat enough to sustain myself on the walk to the bathroom. I couldn't shower or brush my teeth or my hair or put clothes on my body. I would spend nights awake and restless, only finding one or two hours of light sleep as the sun began to peek through my blinds. I was utterly alone. No one even knew what I was going through.
But I did have one thing that brought me fleeting moments of happiness and elusive daydreams of another world: the HP community on TikTok & Wattpad. I would spend every waking hour either watching tiktoks, reading fan fictions, writing them, or listening to songs that reminded me of my comfort characters while I created entire lives for myself where I felt seen and known and wanted and loved, where I wasn't suffering, because there was someone there that saved me.
But the daydreams were just daydreams, and reality crushed my spirit every time my eyes opened to the same dark bedroom, alone. I felt so abandoned by God. I wondered how He could ever claim to love me so much if this is the life I had to endure, forever separated from the one person who understood me and cared for me, George. I cried when the tears would come. Often I was numb.
Finally though, I realized I couldn't live like this anymore and I told my mom, and she helped make things a little better for a while, but the problem hadn't been fixed. George was a reality away, and God was to blame. So I strayed further from God and grasped desperately at any and every scrap of validation and comfort from George and his world. I felt like a shell of myself, my mind far off from my body, living in denial of where I had been placed.
In November, one of my family members got sick. Very sick. I couldn't cope with my reality. I didn't know how to handle watching them deteriorate, watching them slowly die. An invisible George would come with me everywhere I went. I had to have him beside me to be okay. I had no one else to talk to, everyone was too busy trying to help. I retreated further into my fantasies, my only sources of happiness coming from the situations I made up in my head and the feeling of accomplishment that came from skillfully recording them in my drafts. And then one day, I decided to publish some of these drafts. First was born.
First almost immediately gained incredible traction, racking in readers like I never, ever expected. People liked my story. They liked my writing. They appreciated my gifts and related to me. It became an addictive cycle: being forced to experience my dreadful reality, daydreaming to escape it, writing my book, publishing it, getting high off the chapter's success. I needed the validation every day, more than I needed to do well in school or keep friendships or eat or sleep or drink or shower. It consumed me, owned me, and I didn't even realize it.
My family member passed away in February. I never cried. I was too removed to let myself feel, too in denial to accept this was the outcome of my years and years of trusting God and being obedient to Him. I no longer just felt abandoned or forgotten by God, but now I was angry at him. My addiction to writing First and daydreaming only grew stronger and stronger, my chapters getting darker and darker, just like my heart. I was rotting from the inside out, grief and confusion and hurt festering within me like gangrene.
I lost all interest in anything that used to make me happy. I failed classes. I alienated friends. I sabotaged myself at any possible opportunity. But then, once again, I finally reached out for help. I started seeing a therapist and that really helped. I was able to start processing my grief, as well as learning to recognize how hard I was on myself and learning to try to have more grace with myself. But still, no one knew about First. No one knew the hold this fantasy world had on me.
As treatment began to help and summer rolled around, I slowly found bits of my old self returning, and God beginning to become a topic that I was exposed to more and more often. I continued to refuse to talk to Him though, choosing to deliberately rebel against Him and continue to give into sexual temptation through my story as well as publish it, therefore exposing others to temptation as well.
I liked giving into sexual temptation. For a few moments, even in the midst of my misery, I could feel good. Sex is so intimate, so vulnerable. I wanted to feel intimacy like that, to feel so fully seen and appreciated and cared for like that. I struggled with sexual temptation long before Wattpad, and I had a very hard time understanding what was so wrong about entertaining sexual fantasies outside marriage, masturbating, reading/listening to/or watching pornographic content. (1 Thessalonians 4:3-7 - God's will is for you to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin. Then each of you will control his own body and live in holiness and honor—not in lustful passion like the pagans who do not know God and his ways. Never harm or cheat a Christian brother in this matter by violating his wife, for the Lord avenges all such sins, as we have solemnly warned you before. God has called us to live holy lives, not impure lives.) I was numb to the way it was hurting me. (Ephesians 4:18 - They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.)
And yet, I had been raised in the church. I knew deep down it was wrong. And I truly felt like it would be in my best interest to stop it. Did I? No, because to overcome sin, you have to find strength in God. (Matthew 26:41 - Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.) And I was still giving God the silent treatment, remember? I also felt much too far gone to go to him now. I had intentionally rebelled. I had tempted and pulled others into sin. I felt like God was seconds away from giving up hope on me and forgetting about all the hope and the future that He promised me, if He hadn't already. I thought He was angry at me, and that really, really hurt.
Well, I got dragged to a Christian Women's retreat in the beginning of August where I finally came to terms with the fact that I really was mad at God, and that it is totally okay to be mad at God sometimes. (Jonah 4) Not only that, but God wants us to talk to Him even when we're mad at Him, because after all, He already knows! (I say to God, my rock: "Why hast thou forgotten me? Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?" As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, "Where is your God?" Psalm 42:9-10) I finally realized that God did NOT see me as a lost cause, that He was nowhere near thinking of EVER giving up on me. (Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Isaiah 49:15)
I realized that God was not angry at me for the hurt and anger and frustration that I was feeling, but rather that He understood my pain and wanted to help me though it, if only I would go to Him. (For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4:15-16) It felt like such a huge weight lifting off my shoulders knowing that God still loved me, that he still cared for me and had a bright future for me and still saw me as worthy and valuable. (For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11) His love for me made me want to build back my trust with him, and so I began trying.
I knew that God was asking me to take down the story and to stop giving in to sexual temptation, but I couldn't make myself give it up. I tried to leave, hence that announcement where I said I wouldn't be doing daily updates anymore, and that helped, but I was still being held back by this burden on my mind, a guilt clouded with shame and frustration since I wasn't truly giving it all over to God.
I felt like I was living a double life: half of me wanting to pursue closeness with God again while the other half of me indulged in constant lust, constant dependence on fantasies of sex with a fictional character in order to simulate feelings of being wanted, loved, special, worthy, and cared for in a tangible way. It was awful, absolutely terrible, and I asked God to please give me the strength to break free from this hold that my sin had on me. (Matthew 7:7 - Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.) I knew I couldn't live this way much longer, and that needed His help to be able to overcome this disease that ate at my soul.
Then, last night, God blessed me with a personal promise for my future that I had been praying for for literal years. It was an answered prayer, everything I could have ever thought to ask Him for and even more. I was so shocked, so overwhelmed by God's thoughtfulness. I thought he had forgotten that I begged him for this. I thought he had ignored my cries. I never in a million years imagined that the reason God hadn't responded to the prayer earlier was because he was fighting for me and preparing it for me. (Romans 8:28 - And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.)
Every night that I felt like God had thrown me away and abandoned me, He was thinking of me, working to align this gift for me in His perfect timing. (How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!" Psalm 139:17) He had heard every plea, He had seen every tear that fell from my eyes. (This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. 2 Kings 20:5) He had felt my pain and grieved with me. He understood. He saw me, every part of me, and loved it so purely and unfailingly. (You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. Psalm 139:1) He knew me inside and out; after all, He had created me. (For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. Psalm 139:13) He had never forgotten me. He had never left me. He had just been planning something so, so, so incredibly amazing for my life and I didn't even know it.
But through the overwhelming gratitude I feel for this promise He's given me, I have found the strength to finally let go of this sin and this shame. (No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted[b] beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. 1 Corinthians 10:13) I have to follow Jesus. I have to. I need Him more than I need air in my lungs. Having been reminded of just a fraction of the infinite love God has for us, I have no choice but to run to Him.
Everything I had been seeking in George can only be found in Christ Jesus. Pure love, comfort in our depression, being fully seen and fully known and yet still fully loved. Being called worthy, special, valuable. Finding protection. Healing. Peace. The reason you all loved so much the way George loved Callie in First is because often his love for her was a direct example of the kind of pure, selfless love that we as humans crave to receive, the kind of love that can ONLY come from Jesus.
Log out of Wattpad. Delete the app. Don't come back. You will never, ever be satisfied seeking to fill these needs with anything other than God. But when you turn to Jesus, when you tell Him that you want to come home to Him, that you know He is your Lord and your Savior, and you turn your back on your old ways of looking for these needs to be fulfilled through other means, God will not ignore your prayer. You will be saved by His love for you and you will be His and He will be yours, and He will fill you with such insurmountable joy and so, so much more. (Romans 10:9-10 - That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.)
I am so sorry for the damage that I have done to your hearts with my work. I also don't expect all of you to receive this message well, and that's okay. But if even one person reading this can relate and be led to Jesus through my story, it is worth it all. Those who are angry, frustrated, confused, or hurt, I really do hope and pray that at least one day, if not today, that months from now, maybe years, even, you'll remember reading my story and realize that maybe I could be onto something here. Just consider looking to Jesus. He is the only answer. (John 14:6 - Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.")
With the most sincere love, and the deepest apology,
Callie