To the readers of the The Showdown,

I am the friend that “Sammery” is writing about.  I must say that I was surprised when she told me that she was writing a story using my life as its basis.  I was honestly mad at first, because she was telling my story and she never asked me.  But then she told me where she was taking the story – that she was going to have the characters stand up against the bigotry that is so prevalent in society – and I really couldn’t stay mad at her.  Also, she never lets any of us read her stuff (something about it being easier getting criticism from strangers), so when she asked me to read her story I was really shocked and honored. 

Now, I am not a big fan of K-pop or anything, not that it’s bad or anything, I just like to understand the words of the song that I’m listening to.  So, she had to fill me in on who Shinee was and all of that, and she made me watch a couple episodes of a show called ‘Hello Baby’ to sort of see them in action I guess.  They’re interesting guys I’ll give them that...and cute, very cute. 

Some of you may be wondering how accurate this was to my actual story – and it’s really close.  When I woke up the first time in ICU, she was the friend that my family had agreed to put on the list to see me.  She was there all alone when I woke up the first time and started panicking with the tube down my throat.  Something she didn’t include in the story was the second time my heart stopped.  While in ICU, my heart stopped again and she and my younger brother were the ones in the room then.  She, to this day, has not tried to explain to me what that felt like to see, at least not to any of us, and I think she might have been a little too emotional about that particular event to include it in this story (and given how much she had already beat up the kid in the story she might not have wanted to have you all trying to track her down and slash her tires or something…).

I must say that it was weird to see the situation from the outside like this and even stranger to see it happening to someone else.  It is something that is five years past for me, but can so easily be brought to the surface and I was surprised how much this story and your responses to it have affected me.  I found myself crying at the scene when Key talks to Taemin just after he’d woken up the first time, because I could only think of all of my friends who stood by me during the two years that it took me to really recover.  They drove back from college on the weekends, or took trains at their own expense (and trust me they were all the definition of “poor college student”) just to help out with my physical therapy, or give me someone else to yell at when it wasn’t going the way I wanted, or I wasn’t healing up as quickly as I thought I should.  These guys put up with a lot of crap from me during those years and never said a negative word about any of it, and I will never be able to demonstrate my gratitude fully enough to them for that. 

I have read some of the comments that you all have made about me and my situation, and private messages some of you have sent to “Sammery” asking to know about my condition.  And I want to say thank you for every hug offered and feelings lay bare.  It means a lot that people who have never met me, have no idea what I look like and don’t even know my name would feel for my situation and wish me the best.  This morning as I was going to work, I imagined that the person that I bumped into on the street of Chicago with whom I shared the mutual “I’m sorry”s before just moving on with our day, might have been one of you who have invested your time in this story, and cared for me even though I was just a figment in an author’s note at the end of a chapter.  These types of kind words and reactions give me hope that some day in the future people like me won’t have to fear so much.

I think some of you are probably wondering how much of our friends she has inserted into the other characters.  I will say that there were other reactions in our group, as there were many more people in our group of friends than was available in Shinee, but she pretty much encompassed the main ones.  We lost friends because of this – people who refuse to talk to me ever again for liking guys and who refused to talk to her or others who stuck by me solely because of the fact that they would continue to be my friend.  There are some people who still to this day (almost five years later) pretend that I’m still straight – and at this point it’s just funny and I may or may not intentionally try to make them uncomfortable when there is alcohol involved... 

And then there were people like Onew in this story, who just didn’t care and I cannot be more thankful to them.  One of them upon learning literally said, “Cool, pass the cookies would you?” and it made me laugh so hard because to them it was just another fact of life that they didn’t need to worry themselves about.     

And people like Minho (who btw is showing pretty much the exact same reaction that “Sammery” did at first – she is really not comfortable with PDA of anyone, as in she will look away when people kiss in front of her.  She won’t even kiss her boyfriend on the lips in front of other people, just the cheek and only rarely that.  She labels herself as a prude and makes a joke about it now).  She was one who wasn’t comfortable at first, mainly because of unfamiliarity, but brought themselves around.  Funny story though, the whole needle-phobia thing that Taemin has here is totally her.  She hates them with a passion and avoids doctor’s offices like the plague just to not have to see them.  She had a sinus infection for 5 weeks once because she just refused to go to the doctor because she was afraid she might need to get a shot.  Despite that though, she donated blood at the hospital (apparently that hospital has a common practice of asking friends and family of patients to donate blood, especially if they are the same type as the patient – and we’re both A+).  Her boyfriend sat next to her and sang her the song she used in the story to distract her, among other interesting song choices. 

And we did have a friend like Jonghyun.  I was so angry at him at the time (honestly, the couple in this story handled it so much better than I did in real life) and there were many a screaming match between us.  But this is the same friend who found me on the floor of my parent’s garage, unconscious and called for the ambulance.  He sat by me through recovery, pushing me to improve and go farther than the doctors had ever thought I would go.  Doctor’s told me that I would only be able to walk with the aide of a cane at best since my pelvis had shattered, but this friend helped push me through to return to my love of hiking, though the average hike usually takes more time now than if would have before.  He actually transferred colleges to be at one closer to home so that he could help me through recovery.  And he actually introduced me to the man that I have been together with for the last three years.  He called it his wake-up call and he has turned around to be just as supportive as “Sammery” and our other friends have been in these last few years.  After high school, with everyone going off to different colleges it is really easy for friends to become distant and drift apart, but we have remained strong friends.  I guess when you go through something as intense as this was together, there will be no drifting apart – we’re bound for life.    

My favorite part of this story was how she interpreted my time in a coma.  Taemin is made to go through all these memories of what brought him to that point and seems to know that certain people are around him by some weird kind of extra sense.  I know it is controversial, what people say about what people experience while in a coma, but I will swear to knowing that certain people were by my side, and I could hear them sometimes, when I wasn’t caught up in one dream or another.  It was like sleeping and waking, without being able to move…it is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to try to explain to someone – harder than trying to explain to my Irish-Catholic mother that I was not being gay just to spite her, but that I was born that way, I was always that way. 

This was an experience that I hope that no one else would ever need to endure.  I will never be the boy I was before all of this happened.  But it was through my friends that I have recovered and thrive in my life now.  For any of you who are LGBT, find that one person that you can rely on, more if possible, and they are what will get you through the that you will endure.  For those of you who are friends of those who are LGBT, you are more important that you realize.  You are a life-line for those who at times feel like they will never belong.  My friends are the ones who gave me the strength to fight through my recovery and the hope that I would have a family at the end of it, if not one by blood.  They were the ones in my hospital room every day (whether I was conscious or not), and who drove me to physical therapy and painted my crutches purple and green just to make me smile (and they’re my favorite colors so it was kind of amazing).  My friends have become my family more than anything else, and they are the ones who make life worth living and enjoyable.      

Thank you for all of you thoughts and prayers, you will never know how much they mean to me and for anyone else who has ever been in my situation.  Trust me, unfortunately there are a lot more of us than you’d think.  And many aren’t as lucky as I was.    

Sincerely,

Matt   

P.S. I am slightly obsessed with the “Lucifer” song now and I blame her entirely for sweeping me up into one of her obsessions.  As I write this now, I have SHINee playing on my computer speakers and my boyfriend is laughing his off at me while he reads this postscript over my shoulder.