Why I write the beautifully broken

This post could have had many titles. One of them? Why Dax will never get his sight back.

Semi-regularly now, readers ask me if Dax will ever get his sight back. They want to believe he will, and I always feel a little…odd about telling them it’ll never happen.

There’s a very good reason why, and I would like to try to explain it here since I have unlimited space and well…this is my website after all.

I believe we are all broken. Some of us are very mildly broken. We might have some bad memories from a prior relationship, or maybe we have a handful of chicken pox scars on our foreheads or cheeks.

Some of us are much more broken. Some of us have severe PTSD, panic disorders, are missing limbs, are burned, have cancer, fibromyalgia, auto-immune diseases. Some of us are autistic, have brain damage, can’t talk, can’t see, can’t walk.

My characters are broken in all the ways we are. I try to make their challenges and triumphs real and as accurate as possible. And I don’t fix them in the end. There’s one very good reason for that.

By the end of the book, they don’t need fixing.

Now, they do, of course, at least learn how to trust. They learn how to love. They learn how to open up to the one person (or several people) who will always understand them.

But if I fixed them, if I sent Ryker somewhere that could give him skin grafts and fix his scars, if I sent Dax somewhere to have yet another surgery on his eyes, if Cam could have surgery and be able to walk without a cane again, or if Royce suddenly no longer had seizures and the other after-effects of his stroke, it would be like I was saying “You still need fixing. You’re not worthy of love until you’re completely and totally whole.”

And that just isn’t true.

Everyone is worthy of love. Everyone should have someone in their lives who accepts them for who they are. Scars, blindness, missing limbs, PTSD, and more.

I understand why everyone wants Dax to get his sight back. He’s a great guy. And what he went through? He deserves every good thing he can possibly have for the rest of his life. But I’d like to share a short little passage from the end of Second Sight.

Her soft breaths tickle my cheek. Our legs tangle under the blankets, and our hands are joined between us. A shaft of sunlight cuts in through the drapes, and I can make out the rich chestnut of her hair. But for the first time since we first met, I don’t long to know what she looks like. 

Because I know. She’s beautiful. Strong. Capable. Brave. And she loves me. Blind, scarred, with nightmares, anger issues, and a complete inability to ask for help when I need it. For her, I’ll be better. Go back to my shrink. Work on rebuilding my friendship with Ry. 

Those two paragraphs are, really, the entire point of the book. Dax is at peace with his blindness. He doesn’t need to be fixed to be whole, because Evianna…she makes him whole.

Readers will always ask, but my answer, I’m not sorry to say, will always be the same.

Dax is perfect just the way he is.