Obviously the announcement that the Backstreet Boys made last Monday (July 9, 2001) about AJ going into rehab shook me up, so much that I was worried I wouldn't be able to write this story anymore. Thankfully that wasn't the case in the end, but the reason I suddenly felt like my fiction had become reality? Well, there are obviously many, but the main one is that the entire first half of this chapter, including the part where Joey watched the tape from the press conference, was written weeks before the announcement on TRL.
Scary stuff, folks. I think that there are a lot of differences between this story and the reality of what is happening, but I've come to accept the many similarities, too. Many of the things that I've written -- if you take away the whole celebrity bit -- are based on my experiences of someone I loved going through rehab. Many are also wishful thinking on my part because for the real person that I knew, rehab wasn't successful and she viewed it as an inconvenience more than anything else, but the reactions of the people who knew her are something I drew upon here. The human element changes little whether you're a celebrity or not, and that's where I believe those similarities are coming from now.
I wish AJ the best because it's a hard thing he's going through now. Depression is something that drives people to do a lot of harmful things to themselves and it's difficult to get under control sometimes, especially when you don't have the luxury of time to yourself to do it, the luxury to take a day off when you need it and not have to see anyone, the luxury just to have a simple bad day at work because people are expecting you to be at your best at all times. I'm very glad he has a group of friends that seem supportive of him, and I'd like to believe that both groups are like that, and that they'd all stick it out for one another.
And that's all I wanted to say, folks. Hope you enjoyed.