WEBVTT

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There's so many of you.

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(Laughter)

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When I was a kid,

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I hid my heart under the bed,
because my mother said,

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"If you're not careful,
someday someone's going to break it."

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Take it from me: Under the bed
is not a good hiding spot.

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I know because I've been
shot down so many times,

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I get altitude sickness
just from standing up for myself.

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But that's what we were told.

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"Stand up for yourself."

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And that's hard to do
if you don't know who you are.

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We were expected to define ourselves
at such an early age,

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and if we didn't do it,
others did it for us.

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Geek. Fatty.

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Slut. Fag.

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And at the same time we were
being told what we were,

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we were being asked,

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"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

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I always thought
that was an unfair question.

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It presupposes that we can't be
what we already are.

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We were kids.

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When I was a kid, I wanted to be a man.

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I wanted a registered
retirement savings plan

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that would keep me in candy
long enough to make old age sweet.

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(Laughter)

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When I was a kid, I wanted to shave.

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Now, not so much.

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(Laughter)

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When I was eight,
I wanted to be a marine biologist.

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When I was nine, I saw the movie "Jaws,"

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and thought to myself, "No, thank you."

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(Laughter)

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And when I was 10,

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I was told that my parents left
because they didn't want me.

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When I was 11, I wanted to be left alone.

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When I was 12, I wanted to die.
When I was 13, I wanted to kill a kid.

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When I was 14, I was asked
to seriously consider a career path.

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I said, "I'd like to be a writer."

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And they said,
"Choose something realistic."

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So I said, "Professional wrestler."

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And they said, "Don't be stupid."

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See, they asked me what I wanted to be,

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then told me what not to be.

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And I wasn't the only one.

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We were being told
that we somehow must become

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what we are not, sacrificing what we are

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to inherit the masquerade
of what we will be.

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I was being told to accept the identity
that others will give me.

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And I wondered, what made
my dreams so easy to dismiss?

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Granted, my dreams are shy,

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because they're Canadian.

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(Laughter)

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My dreams are self-conscious
and overly apologetic.

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They're standing alone
at the high school dance,

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and they've never been kissed.

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See, my dreams got called names too.

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Silly. Foolish.

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Impossible.

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But I kept dreaming.

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I was going to be a wrestler.
I had it all figured out.

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I was going to be The Garbage Man.

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(Laughter)

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My finishing move was going
to be The Trash Compactor.

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My saying was going to be,
"I'm taking out the trash!"

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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And then this guy,
Duke "The Dumpster" Droese,

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stole my entire shtick.

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(Laughter)

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I was crushed,

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as if by a trash compactor.

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(Laughter)

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I thought to myself,
"What now? Where do I turn?"

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Poetry.

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(Laughter)

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Like a boomerang,
the thing I loved came back to me.

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One of the first lines of poetry
I can remember writing

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was in response to a world
that demanded I hate myself.

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From age 15 to 18, I hated myself

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for becoming the thing that I loathed:

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a bully.

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When I was 19, I wrote,

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"I will love myself
despite the ease with which

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I lean toward the opposite."

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Standing up for yourself
doesn't have to mean

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embracing violence.

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When I was a kid,

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I traded in homework
assignments for friendship,

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then gave each friend a late slip
for never showing up on time,

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and in most cases, not at all.

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I gave myself a hall pass
to get through each broken promise.

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And I remember this plan,
born out of frustration

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from a kid who kept calling me "Yogi,"

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then pointed at my tummy and said,
"Too many picnic baskets."

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Turns out it's not that hard
to trick someone,

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and one day before class, I said,

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"Yeah, you can copy my homework,"

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and I gave him all the wrong answers
that I'd written down the night before.

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He got his paper back
expecting a near-perfect score,

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and couldn't believe it when he looked
across the room at me and held up a zero.

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I knew I didn't have to hold up
my paper of 28 out of 30,

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but my satisfaction was complete
when he looked at me, puzzled,

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and I thought to myself, "Smarter
than the average bear, motherfucker."

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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This is who I am.

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This is how I stand up for myself.

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When I was a kid,

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I used to think that pork chops
and karate chops were the same thing.

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I thought they were both pork chops.

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My grandmother thought it was cute,

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and because they were my favorite,
she let me keep doing it.

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Not really a big deal.

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One day, before I realized fat kids
are not designed to climb trees,

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I fell out of a tree
and bruised the right side of my body.

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I didn't want to tell my grandmother

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because I was scared I'd get in trouble

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for playing somewhere
I shouldn't have been.

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The gym teacher noticed the bruise,
and I got sent to the principal's office.

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From there, I was sent to another
small room with a really nice lady

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who asked me all kinds of questions
about my life at home.

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I saw no reason to lie.

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As far as I was concerned,
life was pretty good.

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I told her, whenever I'm sad,
my grandmother gives me karate chops.

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(Laughter)

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This led to a full-scale investigation,

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and I was removed
from the house for three days,

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until they finally decided
to ask how I got the bruises.

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News of this silly little story
quickly spread through the school,

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and I earned my first nickname:

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Porkchop.

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To this day,

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I hate pork chops.

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I'm not the only kid who grew up this way,

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surrounded by people
who used to say that rhyme

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about sticks and stones,

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as if broken bones hurt more
than the names we got called,

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and we got called them all.

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So we grew up believing
no one would ever fall in love with us,

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that we'd be lonely forever,

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that we'd never meet someone
to make us feel like the sun

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was something they built
for us in their toolshed.

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So broken heartstrings bled the blues,

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and we tried to empty ourselves
so we'd feel nothing.

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Don't tell me that hurts
less than a broken bone,

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that an ingrown life
is something surgeons can cut away,

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that there's no way
for it to metastasize; it does.

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She was eight years old,

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our first day of grade three
when she got called ugly.

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We both got moved to the back of class

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so we would stop
getting bombarded by spitballs.

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But the school halls were a battleground.

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We found ourselves outnumbered
day after wretched day.

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We used to stay inside for recess,
because outside was worse.

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Outside, we'd have
to rehearse running away,

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or learn to stay still like statues,
giving no clues that we were there.

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In grade five, they taped
a sign to the front of her desk

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that read, "Beware of dog."

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To this day,

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despite a loving husband,
she doesn't think she's beautiful,

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because of a birthmark that takes up
a little less than half her face.

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Kids used to say,
"She looks like a wrong answer

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that someone tried to erase,
but couldn't quite get the job done."

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And they'll never understand
that she's raising two kids

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whose definition of beauty
begins with the word "Mom,"

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because they see her heart
before they see her skin,

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because she's only ever
always been amazing.

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He was a broken branch grafted
onto a different family tree,

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adopted,

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not because his parents opted
for a different destiny.

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He was three when he became a mixed drink

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of one part left alone
and two parts tragedy,

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started therapy in eighth grade,

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had a personality
made up of tests and pills,

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lived like the uphills were mountains
and the downhills were cliffs,

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four-fifths suicidal,
a tidal wave of antidepressants,

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and an adolescent being called "Popper,"

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one part because of the pills,

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99 parts because of the cruelty.

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He tried to kill himself in grade 10

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when a kid who could still
go home to Mom and Dad

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had the audacity to tell him,
"Get over it."

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As if depression is something
that could be remedied

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by any of the contents
found in a first-aid kit.

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To this day, he is a stick of TNT
lit from both ends,

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could describe to you in detail
the way the sky bends

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in the moment before it's about to fall,

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and despite an army of friends
who all call him an inspiration,

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he remains a conversation piece
between people who can't understand

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sometimes being drug-free
has less to do with addiction

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and more to do with sanity.

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We weren't the only kids
who grew up this way.

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To this day, kids are still
being called names.

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The classics were
"Hey, stupid," "Hey, spaz."

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Seems like every school
has an arsenal of names

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getting updated every year.

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And if a kid breaks in a school
and no one around chooses to hear,

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do they make a sound?

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Are they just background noise
from a soundtrack stuck on repeat,

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when people say things like,
"Kids can be cruel."

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Every school was a big top circus tent,

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and the pecking order
went from acrobats to lion tamers,

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from clowns to carnies,
all of these miles ahead of who we were.

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We were freaks --

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lobster-claw boys and bearded ladies,

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oddities juggling
depression and loneliness,

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playing solitaire, spin the bottle,

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trying to kiss the wounded
parts of ourselves and heal,

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but at night, while the others slept,

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we kept walking the tightrope.

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It was practice, and yes, some of us fell.

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But I want to tell them that all of this

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is just debris

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left over when we finally decide to smash
all the things we thought we used to be,

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and if you can't see anything
beautiful about yourself,

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get a better mirror, look
a little closer, stare a little longer,

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because there's something inside you
that made you keep trying

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despite everyone who told you to quit.

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You built a cast around your broken heart

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and signed it yourself, "They were wrong."

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Because maybe you didn't belong
to a group or a clique.

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Maybe they decided to pick you last
for basketball or everything.

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Maybe you used to bring bruises and broken
teeth to show-and-tell, but never told,

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because how can you hold your ground

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if everyone around you
wants to bury you beneath it?

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You have to believe that they were wrong.

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They have to be wrong.

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Why else would we still be here?

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We grew up learning
to cheer on the underdog

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because we see ourselves in them.

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We stem from a root planted in the belief

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that we are not what we were called.

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We are not abandoned cars stalled out
and sitting empty on some highway,

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and if in some way we are, don't worry.

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We only got out to walk and get gas.

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We are graduating members
from the class of We Made It,

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not the faded echoes of voices crying out,

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"Names will never hurt me."

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Of course they did.

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But our lives will only ever always
continue to be a balancing act

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that has less to do with pain

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and more to do with beauty.

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(Applause)