Johnny and I had been close friends since elementary school. After college he moved to Switzerland and built a life; wife, kids, a whole existence built somewhere new. When he left I didn't handle it well — I even begged him not to go at one point. I grieved him like I was losing someone, even though he was still there. He'd told me: "Matty, I have to do what I have to do." I hadn't really understood that at the time. I do now.
In the summer of 2011, he was one of the people I most wanted to tell before I came out publicly.
I dropped a letter in the mail to him and Kathy. Then I sent an email.
Hey Johnny,
On Saturday I dropped a letter in the mail to you and Kathy. The contents of that letter are very private at this point so I want to ask that when you receive it that you read it together, and alone.
Saying it that way will undoubtedly make it sound like something horrible. It's not. And actually is something that I'll be able to talk about publicly in a short period of time. But for now I can't because it's kinda personal - something we are keeping pretty much within our family. I just consider you both very close friends, and I want you to know about this before everyone else does.
Once you've gotten the letter and have had a chance to read it please let me know okay? The earliest you should receive it would be Wednesday or Thursday, but you'll likely get it on Monday or later.
Love you guys,
Matt
He wrote back the next day. The letter hadn't arrived yet.
Hey Matty,
I got your e-mail, but not your letter just yet. I'll let you know as soon as I've read it.
I just hope everything is ok!
Take care man and talk to you soon,
- Johnny
Hey Johnny,
Glad you got the email. :)
Everything is fine. Don't worry. It's just one of those life things.
When you get the letter don't be afraid to talk to me okay?
After you read it you can also talk to my parents, or Garret - but not really anyone else knows. And of course Samantha and I.
Everything will be okay. :)
Matty
Two days later, on a Friday, the letter arrived in Switzerland.
Hey Matty,
We just got your letter today (Friday).
It was very touching, painful and shocking to say the least. I wasn't able to read it the whole way through at first, and broke down into tears by the end.
I can't even imagine what you've been going through for the last 20 years, and I don't think I will ever be able to fully comprehend.
I'm not going to write a whole lot by e-mail right now, because I also prefer a real conversation and would prefer talking to you about everything on the phone.
I only hope that you will understand if I don't call you right away in the next couple of days. It is something that will take getting used to on my part, and it honestly is a lot for me to come to terms with. It took a lot of courage on your part to send us the letter explaining everything to us, and I know it must not have been easy to write.
I want you to know that you have and will always have my support for this transitional time of your life. I will always be your friend.
Take care and as you wrote to me, everything will be ok.
- Johnny
I wrote back the same afternoon.
Hey Johnny,
Thanks so much for writing to me. It's totally okay if you want some time to come to digest things a bit.
That really means a lot to me to hear that you reacted with empathy to the story. It truly was difficult to write that letter, and it's been difficult all along the way. But in some ways it's also been a really beautiful thing too to be honest. I mean, it has helped me learn so much about the true depth of friendship, of the love of family, and of what it really means to live as an authentic person. So, like just about everything, it's joy and struggle mixed together.
If you do feel like you need to talk to anyone about it please be sure to not give any indication as to who it is okay?
Don't forget you can talk to my parents too. I'd say you could talk to Jeni, but I know she's on an Alaska cruise right now and unreachable (I just came out to her week before last via letter as well). I actually saw her last week and went to lunch with her. Jeni actually had a pretty hard time with it too to be honest. But she also said that when she first started thinking of this she didn't know what to think, or didn't know what even to imagine I look like or act like these days. She was afraid I'd be a person she didn't recognize anymore. We talked on the phone for about 45 minutes a few days later and that helped her a lot she said cuz she still heard the same person, then we met for lunch last week when she arrived in Seattle before her cruise. It was a little weird for a couple minutes, but the thing she said while we were talking and eating is that I'm still the same person she's always known. She sees me when she looks at me and talks to me.
Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that little story. It's totally okay to be shocked by it, and it's no problem that you want a little time to digest it. I've come out to a few people now, and I can tell you that everyone feels a little overwhelmed at the start. When we talk I'll tell you a couple of the stories - like when I told my parents. Just don't feel like you're the only one that feels a little confused or weirded out at first. God knows I've felt that way most of my life! :) My poor mom was so worried that maybe she ate something, or drank something, or did something unhealthy when she was pregnant with me. She racked her brain for days/weeks trying to remember everything to see if it was maybe her fault. Of course it wasn't - there are transgender people in every culture, all throughout the world's history even before things like pesticides. I don't really know the cause, but I don't think it's anything my parents or anyone else did to me. After all, my brother and sister don't feel this way.
Okay, well really I just want to say that I can't wait to talk to you again man whenever it feels right. It will be really good.
Love you guys,
Matt/Maddie
A few days passed. I checked in.
Hey Johnny,
Just checkin in to see if you are doing alright. Is everything okay? I have time today if you want to chat on the phone.
Matt
Hey Matty,
Thanks for your e-mail, I'm doing fine. Just very busy this week, plus our car just broke down, spent a couple of hours getting that all worked out last night.
All those things aside, I'm still going over your letter, reading your blog and generally just trying to figure out what is going on. I have many many questions that I will eventually ask you, but for the moment I'm still taking this all in. I will contact you soon enough, it won't be months or years or anything, so no worries.
I just need some time to make sense of this for myself.
Hope you are all doing well over there. Take care and talk to you soon,
- Johnny
He was reading the blog. He just needed time. I appreciated that he said so explicitly rather than going quiet.
Three days before I came out publicly, I sent him something I hadn't sent anyone else: a link to my private YouTube video logs. The vlogs I'd been making since January — the first time going out, picking up my first estrogen prescription, the first day of school. All of it, unguarded.
The email I wrote alongside them is the one I think about most from that whole summer.
Hi Johnny,
First off I just want you to know that what you are feeling is normal. It is perfectly natural to feel like you are losing someone in this process. Everyone that I have told has had to go through this process, and to be honest even I have had to go through it. For me there's the temptation to also feel like I am leaving part of my life behind by transitioning. Not to mention that I might be losing my marriage, disrupting friendships, and making life harder for myself because of discrimination.
You should know that I got to a point in my life where I have no choice but to risk all of this. Because not transitioning all of this is risked anyway because I end up in a dark place that neither I nor anyone else wants me to be in.
For me personally (and I only speak for myself, you will have to work through this in your own way I think) I've come to realize that my idea of "leaving my old life behind" is really not a very fair way to look at it. I mean, it's true in some way - when I graduated from high school, or graduated from college, or when I left Spain to again return home each of these moments in my life were transitional, and each of them significant. But it's not like I look back on my memories of college and mourn them as I would a dead person. I do miss those good ol' days, but those memories are part of who I am, those days are not "lost" - I take them with me.
It was tough for me when you "left behind" your life here in the US, and your friendships here, and family, and everything. I went through a grieving process. It was emotional for me, and I felt I had "lost" someone very dear to me. Your response to me was, "Matty, I have to do what I have to do." I now understand what you meant, because I too have to do what I have to do. I have to live for me, and hope that others can weather the transition by my side. I regret that I didn't weather your transition to Switzerland better than I did. And I now realize that I didn't "lose" you at all, you're still the same person - and you're living a much fuller life. Okay, I lost some free dips at Ben & Jerry's, I missed out on going to movies a few dozen times, pigging out on pizza with you. I suppose those are losses - but at the time I thought of it more like you were dying or something. I didn't understand how you could possibly make the "choice" you did, but for you it was so clear what you had to do, it was like you didn't even have to make a choice - you just did what you had to do. You knew what was right for you - even when people around you didn't understand. Now of course I admire the courage it took you to take that step out, but I'm not only proud of you, but I am also so happy for you for what you've made of your life - and how you've been able to create the exact kind of life you wanted and needed to live for yourself. It's not easy I know, and there are very real sacrifices I know you've had to endure, but still - I see you as such a fulfilled human being with a beautiful wife and kids I look back at the way I treated your leaving and I wish I could have told myself to just not sweat the small stuff, you know?
This has helped me a lot. Realizing that transition does not have to mean I am running away from who I was. I am very much the same person - when we have the chance to be together, you will see this. Ultimately, I am not who I am because of my gender - none of us are. This is an arbitrary filter. You are not who you are because you are now a "foreigner" either. We are attracted to people as friends because of reasons much deeper than nationality, or gender, or religion, or race or biology or whatever.
For these reasons I think everything will be okay. :)
As for your concerns about saying "dude" and "man" and whatever I think you're sweating the small stuff a little there. It's not that big a deal to me for you to completely change how you see me overnight. I don't expect that of anyone. In time things will naturally work themselves out. Don't sweat the small stuff, it doesn't matter to me that much. It might be bumpy, that is okay. A safari without bumps isn't a real safari, just a trip to Disneyland. I want the real thing.
I am much more concerned that you and I emerge from this realizing the real reason that we were and are friends. That maybe you and I can find a commonality that already exists, but that maybe we took for granted before, that's maybe much more than skin deep. I do think we'll eventually find it.
I have one concern in sending you these videos Johnny. That if you take something in the wrong way that you won't talk to me. It's really important to me that we be able to talk. Watching my youtube videos isn't a replacement for that. I know that you prefer to pull back a little and process things, but the best way you can see I'm the same person you've always known is by interacting with me.
Lastly, when I come out on Thursday I'm not going to post any pictures of myself. So please do not release these videos to anyone until I say it's okay. It's important because when I come out I don't want people to just forward around some picture or some video of me for sensationalist/gossip reasons. I want people to actually read the letter I have written and hopefully forward that around if they must. So please keep these in confidence.
As to speaking tomorrow afternoon at 1pm I'm in class actually until 3:15pm, so that's the earliest tomorrow I could talk to you. Otherwise it's Tuesday AM. Sorry.
Love,
Maddie (Matt)
We tried to connect that afternoon. His wife was sick. We traded a few notes trying to pin down a time that never quite materialized.
On July 14, I sent the open letter to everyone. By then, Johnny already knew everything.
We had a long-running joke about credit card spending — a persona I'd invented called the Credit Card Deamon who showed up periodically to audit your financial decisions.
Hi Maddie,
Sorry I didn't get back to you quicker, I've been busy the last few days with photo shoots, job searches, playing squash, taking care of the girls, etc. And of course when I remember to write you back, it's when I'm never near my computer.
Sooner or later we'll be able to skype. I'm sure the Credit Card Deamon has a lot of things to tell me since my last credit report.
Hope you are doing well since last week and all and that you have started the path towards finding inner peace. Talk to you soon,
- Johnny
It was the first time he'd written Maddie. I noticed.
Hey Johnny.
I would love to catch up with you at some point on the phone. Can I call you one of these days? My life has been a bit of a whirlwind the last couple weeks with school midterms and life stuff but things are settling down and giving me a chance to catch up on important life and relationships.
Maddie
I'd sent out a mass email to update everyone on my new phone number. Johnny wrote back on a separate thread.
Hey Maddie,
I just received the package you sent me. Thanks for the book and documentary, I'll check them out when I have some free time :)
Any word from Google yet?
- Johnny
That was it. No ceremony. No conversation about where we'd landed.
I had sent him something — a book, a documentary, things I thought might help, or that I just wanted him to have. He'd received them. He was calling me Maddie now, not as a statement, just because that's who I was. And he wanted to know how the job hunt was going.
That's how the adjustment happened. Not in a speech, but in the ordinary texture of two people still being friends. I've visited his family in Switzerland since then, and he's come to the US. We don't see each other as often as I'd like, but we're still here.