The graveyard of dreams is the breeding ground of desperation, hopelessness, and fear. Is it possible to learn how to live again when your only sustenance comes from those very same emotions? This was the major theme burning a hole in my brain when I began writing The Dreamer Chronicles: Desperation.
It was the life I was living. My dreams died right in front of my eyes.
Everything I hoped for was dead. Everything I longed for was smashed to pieces. I considered picking up the pieces and gluing them back together. But my heart wasn’t in it anymore. My identity was shattered, and with it all confidence that I could ever be that person again—or that I even wanted to be anymore.
All that was in front of me was a single step, and then the next. And with each step, a pause. Each pause brought torturous reflection on how things had turned out. The pain. The lies. The betrayal. The loss. And most significantly, the fear of my future. Nothing turned out the way it was supposed to, but that was the reality I was forced to live.
The death of my dreams severed all but my most important relationships. It left me drowning in the separation from and silence of those who had once claimed to be my “friends,” those who had even sworn their loyalty to me as my life came crashing down around me. I was a twig floating in the middle of the ocean with nothing but the buffeting waves to guide me. When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see myself anymore. I didn’t even see a shell of myself because that would have meant there was something of me left. No, all I saw in the mirror was a shadow. A wraith. Nothing but dead eyes with dead dreams staring back at me. I was lost and hopeless. Desperate.
And so, with nothing more to lose, I took that first step. That step took me to a dead end job that didn’t even come close to making ends meet. But it gave me time to think. Time to suffer with my thoughts and try desperately to make sense of it all.
When that step ended abruptly, I took the next step. It was another dead end job, but this one at least kept my family close to the breakeven mark for a time. This new job came with the constant threat of layoffs, but it also allowed me to prove my worth. More importantly, it provided more opportunities to think. And with our finances somewhat secured at least temporarily, I allowed my thoughts to take on a different tenor.
Rather than let my thoughts dwell on the death of my dreams, I shifted them toward creativity. I switched my imagination from reliving my own failures to building a framework with which I could find respite from the constant torture I was putting myself through. It may have been escapism, but I began to weave a story in my mind about three young people who were destined for greatness, but instead lost everything on a scale more painful than most could ever imagine. Each character suffered the same losses, but each dealt with their pain differently. I didn’t realize it until much later, but these characters were allegories for the three responses I had to my own loss: rage, self-loathing, and a tenacious clinging on to my faith. And it was from these three allegories that I began to understand my own pain a little bit more.
In what felt cruel and heartless, I made my characters’ agony far worse than my own. Like a child breaking his toys just to see what’s inside, I tore my characters apart. I chose to break them more severely than I could ever imagine being broken myself. I subjected them to a kind of hell that few in modern times have ever experienced. I forced them to suffer, and then I shattered their dreams into dust. I did all this because if these figments of my imagination who represented parts of my own psyche could manage to survive and realistically dream again after going through all that, then somehow, somewhere, there was still hope for me!
And so the seeds for The Dreamer Chronicles were sown.
Writing provided me with an outlet for my emotions and a distraction from my pain. It took my eyes off of myself, and when I finally looked up from my own life I recognized that I wasn’t the only person in this world hurting. I hadn’t managed to corner the market on making poor choices or being betrayed by those I trusted most. I was shocked to learn that the brutal emotional trauma that comes from the loss of dreams and personal identity weren’t unique to just me. Now that I knew what that kind of pain looked and felt like, I saw the world was filled with people in situations similar to mine. Their stories were all different, but their pain was just as real! They still got up and went about their lives, but on the inside they looked more like the walking dead than the façade they let the world see.
When I finally became conscious of how common my specific type of pain was, the strangest thing happened: My heart broke. Again. But it wasn’t the same kind of broken heart I had already been dealing with. This time, instead of making me feel worthless and useless, the break filled me with compassion for every other person who was hurting, who needed to find hope and healing.
The words “Don’t waste your pain!” resounded in my soul, and I realized the novel I was writing as a salve to my soul wasn’t just for me! Countless others needed my book for the exact same reason I did. Countless others needed to see someone they could relate to become broken beyond compare. They needed to watch that person struggle with loss even as they struggled with their own losses. They needed to witness the journey that person took on the pitted, messy, and crooked path to healing. And in the end, they needed to see that hoping and daring to dream again were realistic possibilities and desirable goals no matter how many times those hopes and dreams seem to bite them in the ass.
The characters I created were no longer just a mechanism for me to sort out my own wounds. They became the engine on which I would be able to show the world that healing and hoping were possible regardless of how desperate they were. The fact that these characters and the world they live in are fictional is irrelevant. Being fictional makes the characters safer and more relatable than if I were to just write about my own struggles—so long as the characters are written well enough. It allows the readers to observe the destruction and healing process through the safety of fantasy and imagination. And oddly enough, those are the exact areas of our minds where healing will ultimately allow us to hope and dream again.
Since my novel and characters are extensions of myself and my own personality, it’s written with heavy Christian motifs. With that being said, I’m hesitant to label it as a “Christian” novel. The reason is because the story is about as “unchurchy” as it gets. The primary theme is about pain and healing so the novel openly embraces and explores the realistic darkness and mess of life. It’s jarringly and shockingly violent at times—though always with purpose. It refuses to shy away from the characters’ deep flaws. It openly questions God’s love and compassion in the face of brutality. And in the end, it doesn’t tie everything in a neat, cliché bow because that’s not how life works. Instead it focuses on the journey, not the destination. It highlights the choices we make and the responsibility we have in allowing the healing process to progress, rather than showing the healing itself.
Another reason I don’t consider this to be a typical “Christian” novel is because this novel dives into many of the darkest aspects humanity has to offer. If my goal is to reach out and relate to those who are broken and hurting–those with dead dreams–and show them healing and hope, then my characters need to experience the violence and darkness humanity faces every day. While the typical person who reads my book might not deal with violence in the physical sense, every person whose dreams have died has suffered mental and emotional violence—war against their souls. And so my novel mirrors that. While keeping the novel PG-13, some key themes within it include oppression, hatred, racism, murder, death, revenge, and utter brokenness. And my readers will feel many of the same emotions my main characters feel as they’re going through the story.
While maintaining the themes from the first book, future sequels will incorporate additional themes such as promiscuity, lust, rape, self-mutilation, attempted suicide, dark magic, racial purity, genocide, and the awful treatment those within the LGBTQ community suffer from many within the church.
Yet through all the darkness the characters observe and experience (and in some cases, participate in), the light of hope and healing remains constant. Interwoven within the dark themes are themes of love, life, joy, grace, laughter, redemption, forgiveness, and standing up for what’s right regardless of the odds against you.
The violence and dark themes of this novel are the backdrop to show off God’s grace and love in a broken and desperate world. And while the novel refuses to pull any punches while exploring the darkness and pain, it places the Almighty firmly in the center of it all—not as the puppetmaster or instigator of violence, but as the hand of hope and healing to the grievously wounded. And finally it offers the characters and readers alike the choice of whether or not they will travel with Him down the long, excruciating path toward healing.
The novel doesn’t tell the characters what to choose, and it purposely ends before telling the readers which choice they made. But it places the choice before them and my readers, just like God placed the choice in front of me when I began to this journey.
And that, ultimately, is the reason I write.
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