I wasn't born in this country.
I don't grow up in any one particular religion.
I have a mixed race background, and I'm gay.
Like many of you here tonight,
I grew up in what I would call survival mode.
When you're in survival mode, your focus is on getting through the day in one piece,
and when you're in that mode at 5, at 10, at 15,
there isn't a lot of space for words like "community", for words like "us" and "we".
There's only space for "I" and "me".
The first time I tried to kill myself, I was 15.
I waited until my family went away for the weekend
and I was alone in the house and I swallowed a bottle of pills.
I don't remember what happened over the next couple of days,
but I'm pretty sure come Monday morning I was on the bus back to school,
pretending everything was fine.
And when someone asked me if that was a cry for help,
I say no, because I told no one. You only cry for help if you believe there's help to cry for.
This letter, in which I speak my truth,
and integrate my small story into a much larger and more important one, is worth sending.
I thought, let me be to someone else what no one was to me. Let me send a message to that kid,
maybe in America, maybe some place far overseas,
maybe someone deep inside, a kid who's being targeted at home or at school or in the streets,
that someone is watching and listening and caring.
That there is an "us", that there is a "we",
and that kid or teenager or adult is loved, and they are not alone.