The Hope Speech

I saw this story on the news today and it broke my heart. I sat with tears streaming down my cheeks, crushing Telly in my arms, unable to find words beyond anger and cutting sorrow.

I wish I could reach out to every single kid who ever felt alone, unloved, rejected, or trashed out. I might not be gay, but I’ve been there. Bullied and watching all of your friends fall in teenage love? Fuck, sometimes I feel like I’m still stuck in that state of mind, left in the dust. When I think about the person I was at 15, that girl was worlds away from who I am now. She had a lot to learn, a lot to become. I have become and it makes me so sad this boy never will have that chance.

I think these are feelings EVERYONE goes through, in different magnitudes. But for someone so young to be so mixed up with medications and circumstances that death at fifteen is their only option? It’s crushing. I’m furious. I’m destroyed. As a former suffering teenager, as someone who has lost a good friend to suicide, I’m moved.

One of my greatest wishes is for these kids, these lost souls, to know they have options. They can have freedom. They can have all the love in the fucking world, it’s out there, it’s waiting. It’s pounding in the hearts of a million people who will love them. My heart being one of them. Every time I hear something like this, it becomes more and more important to me to live a life guided by spreading love. That’s all I want. I want to give love.

Harvey Milk, one of my absolute heroes, said it best: “The only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up. You gotta give ‘em hope.”