Описание: "This is a story about love and acceptance. It is a story about honesty and truth, integrity and hope. Ryan O'Callaghan could have kept it to himself, could have given the world a polished look. But instead he offers us all of himself in these pages. By doing so, he will change lives, save lives, and make the path ahead that much smoother for those who bravely follow in his footsteps."
--Congressman Joe Kennedy III
Ryan O'Callaghan's plan was always to play football and then, when his career was over, kill himself. Growing up in a red-state corner of California, the not-so-subtle messages he heard as a young man from his family and from TV and film routinely equated being gay with disease and death. Letting people in on the darkest secret he kept buried inside was not an option, and it never would be. Better death with a secret than life as a gay man.
As a big kid toppling opponents in high school, Ryan never envisioned just how far his football career would take him. He was recruited by the University of California, Berkeley, where he spent five seasons, playing alongside his friend Aaron Rodgers and eventually winning the Morris Trophy. Then it was on to the NFL for stints with the almost-undefeated New England Patriots and the often-defeated Kansas City Chiefs.
Bubbling under the surface of Ryan's entire NFL career was a collision course between his secret sexuality and his hidden drug use. When the NFL caught him smoking pot, he turned to NFL-sanctioned prescription painkillers that quickly sent his life into a tailspin. As injuries mounted and his daily intake of opioids reached a near-lethal level, he wrote his suicide note to his parents and plotted his death.
Yet someone had been watching. A member of the Chiefs organization stepped in, recognizing the signs of drug addiction. Ryan reluctantly sought psychological help, and it was there that he revealed his lifelong secret for the very first time: he's gay. Now in his late twenties, Ryan faced a fork in the road of his life: end it, or find out if his family and football friends could ever accept a gay man in their lives.
