Well I heard some news, some fucking awful news. They found Matt’s body, at least from what I’ve heard, and honestly I don’t care about posting it here without asking if it’s ok. I don’t think enough people read this for it even to cause a ripple in the pool that is life.
It’s kind of ironic that it was that fateful Easter I heard he was missing in Iraq, and drove like an insane man to his moms house where everyone was meeting. I sat there on matt’s old bed fixing his computer, it had a virus, and everyone was trying to shake off the initial shock. It wasn’t but a few strange surreal days later, my dad was in the hospital recovering from the removal of his kidney due to cancer, and on the news is matt’s face surrounded by Islamic militants holding high powered rifles. I still play that video every now and again to remind myself of the reality of it all.
In the last four years I’ve been absolutely obsessed with checking the news sites, drudge, cnn, wkrc, wxix, and any other news source I can think of to keep abreast of the latest news. I started the day after matt went missing, and I’ve become completely neurotic about checking the news every ten minutes to an hour to make sure I know what is going on. It was particularly painful when the news came out about matt possibly being executed. I saw the image of the back of what appeared to be matt in the grainy dessert photograph, and I kept thinking what a shit shoot.
I never really talked to anyone about it, because nobody really thinks about it, but I guess now is ok. Matt was damn near blind, hell without his glasses he couldn’t see the sun in the sky, and even failed his first entrance test in the army without getting permission from an optometrist to join. Frankly they didn’t know if they could make BCG glasses for the poor guy. So every time I watch the video of matt sitting there I’m always thinking to myself, he’s not wearing his glasses, and contacts need to be changed every day. I can’t help but think how matt had to be blind after the first night, totally screwed visually after the first week, and I can’t imagine what that must have been like. Blind, being held captive by people you don’t understand, language wise, in a foreign country, on your first mission, AFTER getting dumped by a Dear John letter. My god, what that must have been like, and I keep thinking that I may have been there if my shit ass heart/nerve wasn’t screwed up.
I’m not lucky, but I live with regret. I think I always will, I tried drowning it with alcohol once in my life, and all that ended up doing was piss my friends and family off. I am numb to this whole situation after so many years of living with the thought of, did I, or didn’t I have an effect on his decision to join. Hell I still remember laying on the couch messaging matt back and forth while he mentioned he was looking on the army website and was considering joining. I told him flat out if he joined that I’d join to be his battle buddy. Two days laters we’re heading up to join the army.
I’ll probably post more on this subject later I’m just initially in that shock and awe phase.
Matt