Ash Beckham: We're all hiding something. Let's find the courage to open up

236,824 views ・ 2014-02-21

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00:12
I'm going to talk to you tonight
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about coming out of the closet,
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and not in the traditional sense,
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not just the gay closet.
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I think we all have closets.
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Your closet may be telling someone
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you love her for the first time,
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or telling someone that you're pregnant,
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or telling someone you have cancer,
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or any of the other hard conversations
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we have throughout our lives.
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All a closet is is a hard conversation,
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and although our topics may vary tremendously,
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the experience of being in
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and coming out of the closet is universal.
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It is scary, and we hate it, and it needs to be done.
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Several years ago,
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I was working at the South Side Walnut Cafe,
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a local diner in town,
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and during my time there I would go through phases
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of militant lesbian intensity:
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not shaving my armpits,
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quoting Ani DiFranco lyrics as gospel.
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And depending on the bagginess of my cargo shorts
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and how recently I had shaved my head,
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the question would often be sprung on me,
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usually by a little kid:
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"Um, are you a boy or are you a girl?"
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And there would be an awkward silence at the table.
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I'd clench my jaw a little tighter,
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hold my coffee pot with a little more vengeance.
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The dad would awkwardly shuffle his newspaper
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and the mom would shoot a chilling stare at her kid.
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But I would say nothing,
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and I would seethe inside.
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And it got to the point where every time I walked up
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to a table that had a kid anywhere between three and 10 years old, I was ready to fight.
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(Laughter)
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And that is a terrible feeling.
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So I promised myself, the next time, I would say something.
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I would have that hard conversation.
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So within a matter of weeks, it happens again.
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"Are you a boy or are you a girl?"
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Familiar silence, but this time I'm ready,
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and I am about to go all Women's Studies 101
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on this table. (Laughter)
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I've got my Betty Friedan quotes.
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I've got my Gloria Steinem quotes.
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I've even got this little bit from "Vagina Monologues" I'm going to do.
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So I take a deep breath and I look down
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and staring back at me is a four-year-old girl in a pink dress,
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not a challenge to a feminist duel,
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just a kid with a question:
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"Are you a boy or are you a girl?"
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So I take another deep breath,
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squat down to next to her, and say,
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"Hey, I know it's kind of confusing.
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My hair is short like a boy's,
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and I wear boy's clothes, but I'm a girl,
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and you know how sometimes you like to wear a pink dress,
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and sometimes you like to wear your comfy jammies?
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Well, I'm more of a comfy jammies kind of girl."
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And this kid looks me dead in the eye,
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without missing a beat, and says,
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"My favorite pajamas are purple with fish.
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Can I get a pancake, please?"
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(Laughter)
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And that was it. Just, "Oh, okay. You're a girl.
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How about that pancake?"
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It was the easiest hard conversation
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I have ever had.
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And why? Because Pancake Girl and I,
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we were both real with each other.
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So like many of us,
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I've lived in a few closets in my life, and yeah,
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most often, my walls happened to be rainbow.
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But inside, in the dark,
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you can't tell what color the walls are.
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You just know what it feels like to live in a closet.
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So really, my closet is no different than yours
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or yours or yours.
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Sure, I'll give you 100 reasons
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why coming out of my closet was harder than coming out of yours,
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but here's the thing: Hard is not relative.
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Hard is hard.
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Who can tell me that explaining to someone you've just declared bankruptcy
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is harder than telling someone you just cheated on them?
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Who can tell me that his coming out story
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is harder than telling your five-year-old you're getting a divorce?
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There is no harder, there is just hard.
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We need to stop ranking our hard against everyone else's hard
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to make us feel better or worse about our closets
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and just commiserate on the fact that we all have hard.
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At some point in our lives, we all live in closets,
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and they may feel safe,
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or at least safer than what lies on the other side of that door.
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But I am here to tell you,
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no matter what your walls are made of,
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a closet is no place for a person to live.
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Thanks. (Applause)
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So imagine yourself 20 years ago.
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Me, I had a ponytail, a strapless dress,
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and high-heeled shoes.
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I was not the militant lesbian
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ready to fight any four-year-old that walked into the cafe.
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I was frozen by fear, curled up in the corner
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of my pitch-black closet
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clutching my gay grenade,
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and moving one muscle is the scariest thing
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I have ever done.
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My family, my friends, complete strangers --
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I had spent my entire life
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trying to not disappoint these people,
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and now I was turning the world upside down
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on purpose.
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I was burning the pages of the script
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we had all followed for so long,
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but if you do not throw that grenade, it will kill you.
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One of my most memorable grenade tosses
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was at my sister's wedding.
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(Laughter)
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It was the first time that many in attendance
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knew I was gay, so in doing my maid of honor duties,
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in my black dress and heels,
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I walked around to tables
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and finally landed on a table of my parents' friends,
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folks that had known me for years.
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And after a little small talk, one of the women shouted out,
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"I love Nathan Lane!"
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And the battle of gay relatability had begun.
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"Ash, have you ever been to the Castro?"
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"Well, yeah, actually, we have friends in San Francisco."
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"Well, we've never been there but we've heard it's fabulous."
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"Ash, do you know my hairdresser Antonio?
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He's really good and he has never talked about a girlfriend."
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"Ash, what's your favorite TV show?
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Our favorite TV show? Favorite: Will & Grace.
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And you know who we love? Jack.
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Jack is our favorite."
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And then one woman, stumped
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but wanting so desperately to show her support,
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to let me know she was on my side,
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she finally blurted out,
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"Well, sometimes my husband wears pink shirts."
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(Laughter)
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And I had a choice in that moment,
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as all grenade throwers do.
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I could go back to my girlfriend and my gay-loving table
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and mock their responses,
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chastise their unworldliness and their inability
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to jump through the politically correct gay hoops I had brought with me,
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or I could empathize with them
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and realize that that was maybe one of the hardest things they had ever done,
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that starting and having that conversation
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was them coming out of their closets.
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Sure, it would have been easy to point out where they felt short.
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It's a lot harder to meet them where they are
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and acknowledge the fact that they were trying.
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And what else can you ask someone to do but try?
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If you're going to be real with someone,
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you gotta be ready for real in return.
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So hard conversations are still not my strong suit.
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Ask anybody I have ever dated.
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But I'm getting better, and I follow what I like to call
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the three Pancake Girl principles.
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Now, please view this through gay-colored lenses,
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but know what it takes to come out of any closet
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is essentially the same.
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Number one: Be authentic.
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Take the armor off. Be yourself.
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That kid in the cafe had no armor,
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but I was ready for battle.
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If you want someone to be real with you,
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they need to know that you bleed too.
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Number two: Be direct. Just say it. Rip the Band-Aid off.
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If you know you are gay, just say it.
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If you tell your parents you might be gay,
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they will hold out hope that this will change.
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Do not give them that sense of false hope.
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(Laughter)
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And number three, and most important --
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(Laughter)
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Be unapologetic.
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You are speaking your truth.
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Never apologize for that.
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And some folks may have gotten hurt along the way,
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so sure, apologize for what you've done,
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but never apologize for who you are.
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And yeah, some folks may be disappointed,
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but that is on them, not on you.
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Those are their expectations of who you are, not yours.
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That is their story, not yours.
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The only story that matters
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is the one that you want to write.
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So the next time you find yourself
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in a pitch-black closet clutching your grenade,
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know we have all been there before.
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And you may feel so very alone, but you are not.
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And we know it's hard but we need you out here,
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no matter what your walls are made of,
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because I guarantee you there are others
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peering through the keyholes of their closets
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looking for the next brave soul to bust a door open, so be that person
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and show the world that we are bigger than our closets
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and that a closet is no place for a person
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to truly live.
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Thank you, Boulder. Enjoy your night. (Applause)
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