0:00:05.662,0:00:12.267
There's so many of you.

0:00:12.267,0:00:14.872
When I was a kid,

0:00:14.872,0:00:17.598
I hid my heart under the bed, because my mother said,

0:00:17.598,0:00:21.240
"If you're not careful, someday someone's going to break it."

0:00:21.240,0:00:24.728
Take it from me. Under the bed is not a good hiding spot.

0:00:24.728,0:00:27.072
I know because I've been shot down so many times

0:00:27.072,0:00:30.928
I get altitude sickness just from standing up for myself.

0:00:30.928,0:00:33.208
But that's what we were told.

0:00:33.208,0:00:35.648
Stand up for yourself.

0:00:35.648,0:00:38.424
And that's hard to do if you don't know who you are.

0:00:38.424,0:00:41.885
We were expected to define ourselves at such an early age,

0:00:41.885,0:00:45.764
and if we didn't do it, others did it for us.

0:00:45.764,0:00:50.160
Geek. Fatty. Slut. Fag.

0:00:50.160,0:00:53.223
And at the same time we were being told what we were,

0:00:53.223,0:00:55.000
we were being asked,

0:00:55.000,0:00:57.834
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

0:00:57.834,0:00:59.507
I always thought that was an unfair question.

0:00:59.507,0:01:03.281
It presupposes that we can't be what we already are.

0:01:03.281,0:01:05.024
We were kids.

0:01:05.024,0:01:08.247
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a man.

0:01:08.247,0:01:10.558
I wanted a registered retirement savings plan

0:01:10.558,0:01:14.676
that would keep me in candy long enough to make old age sweet.

0:01:14.676,0:01:17.266
When I was a kid, I wanted to shave.

0:01:17.266,0:01:20.836
Now, not so much.

0:01:20.836,0:01:24.511
When I was eight, I wanted to be a marine biologist.

0:01:24.511,0:01:26.273
When I was nine, I saw the movie "Jaws,"

0:01:26.273,0:01:29.388
and thought to myself, "No, thank you."

0:01:29.388,0:01:33.202
And when I was 10, I was told that my parents left because they didn't want me.

0:01:33.202,0:01:34.793
When I was 11, I wanted to be left alone.

0:01:34.793,0:01:38.968
When I was 12, I wanted to die. When I was 13, I wanted to kill a kid.

0:01:38.968,0:01:42.862
When I was 14, I was asked to seriously consider a career path.

0:01:42.862,0:01:45.523
I said, "I'd like to be a writer."

0:01:45.523,0:01:48.655
And they said, "Choose something realistic."

0:01:48.655,0:01:52.111
So I said, "Professional wrestler."

0:01:52.111,0:01:54.439
And they said, "Don't be stupid."

0:01:54.439,0:01:57.058
See, they asked me what I wanted to be,

0:01:57.058,0:01:59.650
then told me what not to be.

0:01:59.650,0:02:01.645
And I wasn't the only one.

0:02:01.645,0:02:03.850
We were being told that we somehow must become

0:02:03.850,0:02:05.938
what we are not, sacrificing what we are

0:02:05.938,0:02:08.722
to inherit the masquerade of what we will be.

0:02:08.722,0:02:10.867
I was being told to accept the identity

0:02:10.867,0:02:13.482
that others will give me.

0:02:13.482,0:02:17.262
And I wondered, what made my dreams so easy to dismiss?

0:02:17.262,0:02:20.778
Granted, my dreams are shy,

0:02:20.778,0:02:25.636
because they're Canadian. (Laughter)

0:02:25.636,0:02:29.258
My dreams are self-conscious and overly apologetic.

0:02:29.258,0:02:31.353
They're standing alone at the high school dance,

0:02:31.353,0:02:34.071
and they've never been kissed.

0:02:34.071,0:02:36.895
See, my dreams got called names too.

0:02:36.895,0:02:40.794
Silly. Foolish. Impossible.

0:02:40.794,0:02:42.417
But I kept dreaming.

0:02:42.417,0:02:44.252
I was going to be a wrestler. I had it all figured out.

0:02:44.252,0:02:47.566
I was going to be The Garbage Man.

0:02:47.566,0:02:51.286
My finishing move was going to be The Trash Compactor.

0:02:51.286,0:02:55.470
My saying was going to be, "I'm taking out the trash!"

0:02:55.470,0:03:00.729
(Laughter) (Applause)

0:03:00.729,0:03:05.555
And then this guy, Duke "The Dumpster" Droese,

0:03:05.555,0:03:09.171
stole my entire shtick.

0:03:09.171,0:03:15.119
I was crushed, as if by a trash compactor.

0:03:15.119,0:03:18.942
I thought to myself, "What now? Where do I turn?"

0:03:18.942,0:03:22.078
Poetry.

0:03:22.078,0:03:25.642
Like a boomerang, the thing I loved came back to me.

0:03:25.642,0:03:27.942
One of the first lines of poetry I can remember writing

0:03:27.942,0:03:30.504
was in response to a world that demanded I hate myself.

0:03:30.504,0:03:33.327
From age 15 to 18, I hated myself

0:03:33.327,0:03:37.560
for becoming the thing that I loathed: a bully.

0:03:37.560,0:03:40.166
When I was 19, I wrote,

0:03:40.166,0:03:43.065
"I will love myself despite the ease with which

0:03:43.065,0:03:46.023
I lean toward the opposite."

0:03:46.023,0:03:49.151
Standing up for yourself doesn't have to mean

0:03:49.151,0:03:51.862
embracing violence.

0:03:51.862,0:03:53.365
When I was a kid,

0:03:53.365,0:03:56.287
I traded in homework assignments for friendship,

0:03:56.287,0:03:58.983
then gave each friend a late slip for never showing up on time,

0:03:58.983,0:04:01.143
and in most cases not at all.

0:04:01.143,0:04:04.127
I gave myself a hall pass to get through each broken promise.

0:04:04.127,0:04:06.415
And I remember this plan, born out of frustration

0:04:06.415,0:04:08.847
from a kid who kept calling me "Yogi,"

0:04:08.847,0:04:12.456
then pointed at my tummy and said, "Too many picnic baskets."

0:04:12.456,0:04:15.034
Turns out it's not that hard to trick someone,

0:04:15.034,0:04:16.277
and one day before class, I said,

0:04:16.277,0:04:18.442
"Yeah, you can copy my homework,"

0:04:18.442,0:04:20.344
and I gave him all the wrong answers

0:04:20.344,0:04:22.445
that I'd written down the night before.

0:04:22.445,0:04:24.937
He got his paper back expecting a near-perfect score,

0:04:24.937,0:04:28.536
and couldn't believe it when he looked across the room at me and held up a zero.

0:04:28.536,0:04:31.779
I knew I didn't have to hold up my paper of 28 out of 30,

0:04:31.779,0:04:34.857
but my satisfaction was complete when he looked at me, puzzled,

0:04:34.857,0:04:38.623
and I thought to myself, "Smarter than the average bear, motherfucker."

0:04:38.623,0:04:46.119
(Laughter) (Applause)

0:04:46.119,0:04:49.359
This is who I am.

0:04:49.359,0:04:53.283
This is how I stand up for myself.

0:04:53.283,0:04:55.383
When I was a kid,

0:04:55.383,0:04:59.838
I used to think that pork chops and karate chops were the same thing.

0:04:59.838,0:05:02.615
I thought they were both pork chops.

0:05:02.615,0:05:04.206
And because my grandmother thought it was cute,

0:05:04.206,0:05:07.135
and because they were my favorite, she let me keep doing it.

0:05:07.135,0:05:08.704
Not really a big deal.

0:05:08.704,0:05:12.487
One day, before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees,

0:05:12.487,0:05:15.665
I fell out of a tree and bruised the right side of my body.

0:05:15.665,0:05:17.540
I didn't want to tell my grandmother about it

0:05:17.540,0:05:20.902
because I was scared I'd get in trouble for playing somewhere I shouldn't have been.

0:05:20.902,0:05:22.940
A few days later, the gym teacher noticed the bruise,

0:05:22.940,0:05:25.167
and I got sent to the principal's office.

0:05:25.167,0:05:26.877
From there, I was sent to another small room

0:05:26.877,0:05:32.273
with a really nice lady who asked me all kinds of questions about my life at home.

0:05:32.273,0:05:34.215
I saw no reason to lie.

0:05:34.215,0:05:36.735
As far as I was concerned, life was pretty good.

0:05:36.735,0:05:40.884
I told her, whenever I'm sad, my grandmother gives me karate chops.

0:05:40.884,0:05:48.537
(Laughter)

0:05:48.537,0:05:52.737
This led to a full-scale investigation,

0:05:52.737,0:05:55.411
and I was removed from the house for three days,

0:05:55.411,0:05:59.281
until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruises.

0:05:59.281,0:06:01.914
News of this silly little story quickly spread through the school,

0:06:01.914,0:06:04.722
and I earned my first nickname:

0:06:04.722,0:06:06.662
Porkchop.

0:06:06.662,0:06:13.252
To this day, I hate pork chops.

0:06:13.252,0:06:16.017
I'm not the only kid who grew up this way,

0:06:16.017,0:06:18.665
surrounded by people who used to say that rhyme

0:06:18.665,0:06:21.178
about sticks and stones,

0:06:21.178,0:06:23.818
as if broken bones hurt more than the names we got called,

0:06:23.818,0:06:26.066
and we got called them all.

0:06:26.066,0:06:29.650
So we grew up believing no one would ever fall in love with us,

0:06:29.650,0:06:31.866
that we'd be lonely forever,

0:06:31.866,0:06:34.107
that we'd never meet someone to make us feel like the sun

0:06:34.107,0:06:36.569
was something they built for us in their toolshed.

0:06:36.569,0:06:40.618
So broken heartstrings bled the blues, and we tried to empty ourselves so we'd feel nothing.

0:06:40.618,0:06:43.025
Don't tell me that hurt less than a broken bone,

0:06:43.025,0:06:45.619
that an ingrown life is something surgeons can cut away,

0:06:45.619,0:06:48.821
that there's no way for it to metastasize; it does.

0:06:48.821,0:06:50.596
She was eight years old,

0:06:50.596,0:06:54.089
our first day of grade three when she got called ugly.

0:06:54.089,0:06:56.113
We both got moved to the back of class

0:06:56.113,0:06:58.970
so we would stop getting bombarded by spitballs.

0:06:58.970,0:07:00.836
But the school halls were a battleground.

0:07:00.836,0:07:03.401
We found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day.

0:07:03.401,0:07:06.945
We used to stay inside for recess, because outside was worse.

0:07:06.945,0:07:09.026
Outside, we'd have to rehearse running away,

0:07:09.026,0:07:12.153
or learn to stay still like statues, giving no clues that we were there.

0:07:12.153,0:07:15.340
In grade five, they taped a sign to the front of her desk

0:07:15.340,0:07:17.970
that read, "Beware of dog."

0:07:17.970,0:07:22.854
To this day, despite a loving husband, she doesn't think she's beautiful

0:07:22.854,0:07:26.618
because of a birthmark that takes up a little less than half her face.

0:07:26.618,0:07:28.769
Kids used to say, "She looks like a wrong answer

0:07:28.769,0:07:32.065
that someone tried to erase, but couldn't quite get the job done."

0:07:32.065,0:07:35.026
And they'll never understand that she's raising two kids

0:07:35.026,0:07:39.161
whose definition of beauty begins with the word "Mom,"

0:07:39.161,0:07:41.515
because they see her heart before they see her skin,

0:07:41.515,0:07:43.087
because she's only ever always been amazing.

0:07:43.087,0:07:48.482
He was a broken branch grafted onto a different family tree,

0:07:48.482,0:07:50.310
adopted,

0:07:50.310,0:07:54.465
not because his parents opted for a different destiny.

0:07:54.465,0:07:56.301
He was three when he became a mixed drink

0:07:56.301,0:07:59.546
of one part left alone and two parts tragedy,

0:07:59.546,0:08:01.723
started therapy in eighth grade,

0:08:01.723,0:08:04.769
had a personality made up of tests and pills,

0:08:04.769,0:08:08.561
lived like the uphills were mountains and the downhills were cliffs,

0:08:08.561,0:08:11.969
four fifths suicidal, a tidal wave of antidepressants,

0:08:11.969,0:08:14.879
and an adolescence being called "Popper,"

0:08:14.879,0:08:16.800
one part because of the pills,

0:08:16.800,0:08:19.631
99 parts because of the cruelty.

0:08:19.631,0:08:22.127
He tried to kill himself in grade 10

0:08:22.127,0:08:24.727
when a kid who could still go home to Mom and Dad

0:08:24.727,0:08:28.179
had the audacity to tell him, "Get over it."

0:08:28.179,0:08:30.662
As if depression is something that could be remedied

0:08:30.662,0:08:33.458
by any of the contents found in a first aid kit.

0:08:33.458,0:08:37.058
To this day, he is a stick of TNT lit from both ends,

0:08:37.058,0:08:39.529
could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends

0:08:39.529,0:08:41.450
in the moment before it's about to fall,

0:08:41.450,0:08:44.232
and despite an army of friends who all call him an inspiration,

0:08:44.232,0:08:47.632
he remains a conversation piece between people who can't understand

0:08:47.632,0:08:50.880
sometimes being drug-free has less to do with addiction

0:08:50.880,0:08:53.919
and more to do with sanity.

0:08:53.919,0:08:56.880
We weren't the only kids who grew up this way.

0:08:56.880,0:09:00.452
To this day, kids are still being called names.

0:09:00.452,0:09:05.367
The classics were, "Hey stupid," "Hey spaz."

0:09:05.367,0:09:08.240
Seems like every school has an arsenal of names

0:09:08.240,0:09:10.787
getting updated every year,

0:09:10.787,0:09:13.339
and if a kid breaks in a school and no one around chooses to hear,

0:09:13.339,0:09:15.480
do they make a sound?

0:09:15.480,0:09:17.768
Are they just background noise from a soundtrack stuck

0:09:17.768,0:09:22.528
on repeat when people say things like, "Kids can be cruel."

0:09:22.528,0:09:25.489
Every school was a big top circus tent,

0:09:25.489,0:09:28.392
and the pecking order went from acrobats to lion tamers,

0:09:28.392,0:09:31.688
from clowns to carnies, all of these miles ahead of who we were.

0:09:31.688,0:09:35.752
We were freaks -- lobster claw boys and bearded ladies,

0:09:35.752,0:09:38.166
oddities juggling depression and loneliness,

0:09:38.166,0:09:39.919
playing solitaire, spin the bottle,

0:09:39.919,0:09:42.420
trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal,

0:09:42.420,0:09:45.184
but at night, while the others slept,

0:09:45.184,0:09:47.640
we kept walking the tightrope.

0:09:47.640,0:09:50.896
It was practice, and yes, some of us fell.

0:09:50.896,0:09:54.264
But I want to tell them that all of this

0:09:54.264,0:09:58.823
is just debris left over when we finally decide to smash

0:09:58.823,0:10:01.432
all the things we thought we used to be,

0:10:01.432,0:10:04.984
and if you can't see anything beautiful about yourself,

0:10:04.984,0:10:09.555
get a better mirror, look a little closer, stare a little longer,

0:10:09.555,0:10:12.216
because there's something inside you that made you keep trying

0:10:12.216,0:10:14.624
despite everyone who told you to quit.

0:10:14.624,0:10:16.958
You built a cast around your broken heart and signed it yourself.

0:10:16.958,0:10:18.919
You signed it, "They were wrong."

0:10:18.919,0:10:21.707
Because maybe you didn't belong to a group or a clique.

0:10:21.707,0:10:24.788
Maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything.

0:10:24.788,0:10:28.530
Maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth to show-and-tell, but never told,

0:10:28.530,0:10:29.977
because how can you hold your ground

0:10:29.977,0:10:31.967
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it?

0:10:31.967,0:10:36.290
You have to believe that they were wrong.

0:10:36.290,0:10:38.873
They have to be wrong.

0:10:38.873,0:10:42.472
Why else would we still be here?

0:10:42.472,0:10:45.113
We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog

0:10:45.113,0:10:47.694
because we see ourselves in them.

0:10:47.694,0:10:49.999
We stem from a root planted in the belief

0:10:49.999,0:10:52.724
that we are not what we were called.

0:10:52.724,0:10:54.479
We are not abandoned cars stalled out

0:10:54.479,0:10:57.037
and sitting empty on some highway,

0:10:57.037,0:10:58.558
and if in some way we are, don't worry.

0:10:58.558,0:11:00.574
We only got out to walk and get gas.

0:11:00.574,0:11:04.276
We are graduating members from the class of We Made It,

0:11:04.276,0:11:06.213
not the faded echoes of voices crying out,

0:11:06.213,0:11:10.844
"Names will never hurt me."

0:11:10.844,0:11:15.272
Of course they did.

0:11:15.272,0:11:17.394
But our lives will only ever always

0:11:17.394,0:11:20.338
continue to be a balancing act

0:11:20.338,0:11:22.945
that has less to do with pain

0:11:22.945,0:11:26.880
and more to do with beauty.

0:11:26.880,0:11:30.880
(Applause)