TED | 献给欺凌的受害者，你们依然美丽

00:17

好多人呀。

00:24

当我还是小孩子的时候，我把自己的心藏在床底下，因为我的妈妈告诉我，“你要是不小心保管，終有一天有人會摧毀它。”听我说，床底下并不是藏东西的好地方，我很清楚因为每当我想要站起来，自强不息的时候都会因为“高原反应”而被一次次打倒在地。但这就是别人教我们的。自强不息。如果你没有明确的定位，你很难做到自强不息。我们还很小的时候就被要求明确自己的定位，如果我们做不到，别人就会代劳。“呆子”。“胖子”。“荡妇”。“苦力”。

01:02

在我们被赋予身份定位的同时，我们总是被人问到，“长大后你想做什么？”我一直觉得这个问题问得很不公平。它预先假设了我们不能维持现在的样子。我们是小孩子。

01:17

当我是小孩子的时候，我想变成一个男人。我想要有自己的养老金账户，钱足够我把余下的一辈子时间都只花在制作老式糖果上当我是小孩子的时候，我希望可以刮胡子。现在？不想了。八岁的时候，我想当海洋生物学家。九岁的时候，我看了《大白鲨》。然后我对自己说，“还是算了吧。”十岁的时候，我的生父母离开了我，他们不要我了。11岁的时候，我希望自己一个人生活。12岁的时候我不想活了。13岁的时候我想杀掉一个小孩。14岁的时候我被要求严肃的考虑以后的职业生涯。

01:54

我说，“我想做一个作家。”

01:57

他们说：“说个现实点的工作。”

02:00

于是我说，“职业摔跤运动员。”

02:04

他们说，“别傻了。”

02:06

你看，他们问我想做什么，然后又告诉我统统不能做。

02:11

而且不止是对我一个不知道为什么，我们总是被灌输，我们必须变成跟自己不同的样子，牺牲原本的自我，来适应我们将要戴上的身份面具。我总是被要求接受别人赋予我的身份。

02:25

我不明白，为什么我的梦想就这么容易被否定？好吧，我的梦想们都很害羞，因为它们都是加拿大人。（笑声）我的梦想们，她们都太难为情、太谦卑了。它们孤零零的站在高中舞会的角落，从未被人欣赏过她们。你瞧，我的梦想们也被人起了外号。傻瓜。笨蛋。异想天开。但是我一直怀有梦想。我要做一个摔跤运动员。一切都想好了。我要像垃圾搬运工一样（去摔跤）。我摔跤的结束动作也会像垃圾压实机一样。我的台词是，“我要把这垃圾扔出去！”

03:07

（笑声）（掌声）

03:12

然后这个人，杜克·“回收站”·卓斯，抢走了我所有的台词。我的心就像是被垃圾压实机压过一样沮丧。我问自己，“怎么办？我还能做什么？”

03:30

诗歌。我喜爱的东西像回旋镖一样又回到了我身边。我记得我写下的第一行诗歌是对这个让我憎恨我自己的世界的回应。在15到18岁之间，我憎恨自己，憎恨我变成了我厌恶的样子：一个恃强凌弱的人。

03:49

19岁的时候，我写道，“我将爱我自己，不去在乎自己”“是否站在自己讨厌的位置。”

03:58

自强不息并不表示你需要使用暴力。

04:03

当我还是小孩子的时候，我用我的家庭作业换取友谊，然后又通过迟到避开所有的朋友，一般都不会有什么问题。每次爽约我都能立刻原谅自己。有次，一个小孩子让我很沮丧，他一直叫我“修行者”，指着我的肚子说，“好大的野餐篮子。”因此我有了一个计划。我发现原来戏弄一个人也不难，有一天快上课的时候，我对他说“嘿，给你抄我的作业，”然后我把自己昨天写好的错误答案递给了他。他怀着满分的期待去拿作业，却得了0分他无法相信，在教室的另一头望着我，做出“零”的手势。我知道我不用把自己接近满分的作业举起来给他看，很奇怪，他看着我的时候，我感到很满足，我对自己说，“比一般人聪明嘛，狗娘养的。”

04:50

（笑声）（掌声）

04:58

这就是我。这就是我自强的方式。

05:05

当我是小孩子的时候，我曾经认为“猪排骨(porkchops)”和“空手劈(karatechops)”是一样的。我以为它们都是猪排的意思。而我的奶奶觉得我这样很可爱，而因为我喜欢这些，所以她并没有纠正我。这也不是什么大事。有一天我去爬树，我才知道胖子是不适合爬树的，我从树上摔了下来，身体的右侧擦伤了。我不想告诉我的奶奶，我怕惹麻烦，因为本来去我那个地方玩就被认为是不应该的。几天之后，体育老师发现了我身上的伤痕，我被带到了校长办公室，然后又从那里被转到一个小房间，一个很和蔼的女士问了我很多家里的事情。我实话实说。当时我感觉，这一切都还蛮好的。我告诉她，每当我不开心的时候，我的奶奶就会给我“空手劈（karatechops)”。

05:52

（笑声）

06:00

这引发了一次全面的（反虐待儿童）调查。我被从家里转移出来，被托管了三天，直到他们问起我身上的淤青是怎么来的。这个愚蠢的故事很快就在学校传开了，我有了第一个外号：“猪排（porkchop）”时至今日，我都讨厌听到“猪排”这个词。

06:25

很多小孩的成长环境都跟我相似，周围都是一些成天舞刀弄枪欺负别人的人，仿佛肉体的伤痛比侮辱的外号带给我们的痛苦更多，而我们同时感受到了这些痛苦。所以我们长大后，觉得没有人会爱上我们，我们注定孤独一辈子，而我们遇到的那些把我们当作太阳的人，不过是把我们当作是一种备选的工具。我们破碎的心里流淌着忧伤，想要麻木自己感不到疼痛。不要跟我说内心的伤痛比不上骨折的痛苦，不要跟我说内在的痛苦可以通过外科手术切掉，不要跟我说没有办法转移；它可以。

07:00

我认识一个女孩，9岁升到三年级的第一天便有人唤她丑。我俩都搬到了教室后排这样就不会老是被人丢纸团了。但是学校的走廊还是跟战场一样。我们寡不敌众，每天都被人欺负。我们常常躲在学校，因为外面的环境更糟。在外面，我们需要时刻准备做着逃跑的准备，或者像雕塑一样一动不动，不让人注意到。五年级的时候，他们在她的课桌前贴了一张纸，上面写着，“注意，狗出没。”时至今日，她都无法发现自己的美，即使她有深爱她的丈夫因为她的脸上，有一块小小的胎记。小伙伴们总说，“她的脸就像是写了错误答案的纸，被人用橡皮擦来擦去，却总是擦不干净。”他们永远的无法理解，她抚养的两个孩子将身为母亲的她视为美的化身。因为她的孩子先看到了她的内心，然后才是她的皮肤，只有她的内心一直保持着如此的迷人。

07:55

这个男生被嫁接在另外一个家庭上被人领养，并不是因为他的父母离婚了。他在三岁的时候就饮下了一杯孤独、两杯苦难勾兑的酒，八年级的时候开始接受治疗，各种心理测试和药丸塑造了他的人格，他的生活就像是过山车一样颠簸不定，四五次自杀未遂，一波一波的抗抑郁药，还有“嗜药者”的外号。1%是由于这些药丸，99%是因为生活的残酷。十年级的时候尝试自杀，那个时候他还在家住，他的爸爸妈妈跟他说的只是，“你要克服它。”就好像抑郁可以轻易的被急救药箱里面的什么东西修复好的一样。今天，他就像是一根TNT炸药桶，两端都被点燃了，他会告诉你，当天空开始坠落时天空将会如何的扭曲弯折。尽管很多的朋友都称赞他的才华，他依然免不了成为别人的谈资，这些人无法理解，一个人是否吸毒，跟药物上瘾关系不大，更多的取决于他的理智。

09:05

像我们这样成长起来的孩子还有很多。时至今日，有的孩子还在被人取侮辱的外号。比如，“笨蛋”，“怪胎”。似乎每个学校里面都有一个弹药库存储这些外号，一年一年的更新换代，如果学校里一个孩子受了伤却没人愿意理他，他们会让人知道么？还是说他们就像录音磁带的噪音一样反复不停，而人们只是说着“孩子也会很坏”这样的话？每个学校都像是一个大马戏团，人与人之间等级分明，从杂耍员到驯兽师，从小丑到龙套，他们的等级都比我们高好几层楼。我们是怪胎——女孩长着胡子，男孩长着龙虾的爪子被鄙弃，被戏弄，感到沮丧，感到孤独，一个人玩纸牌，一个人玩转瓶子，（转瓶选择接吻对象的游戏）亲吻自己的伤口，尝试治愈自己，但每每夜深人静，我们会走上钢丝，默默练习。是的，也有不成功的例子但是我想要告诉他们，当我们决定跟过去的自己决裂，开始全新的自己，这些经历不过是我们抛弃的废墟，如果你无法看到自己的美，换个更好的镜子，凑得更近一点，看得更久一点，因为你的内心深处有个声音一直在阻止你离开现在的自己。你在自己破碎的心灵周围筑起城墙并亲手写上：“他们是错的。”或许因为你不被任何一个小团体接纳。或许他们只是找不到人玩的时候才拉上你。或许你想要向他们展示自己的伤口，但是你从来没有，你怎么能在一个所有人都敌视你的环境中表露自己的弱点呢？你不得不相信他们是错的。他们必须是错的。不然我们为何存在？

10:54

我们为失败者喝彩，因为我们就是他们。我们并不像那些强加给我们的外号一样不堪，这是我们得以成长的信念。我们并不是高速路边被抛弃的破旧车辆，即使有些相似，也没有关系。我们只需要一些汽油，就能开起来。我们的成功是靠自己努力的克服这些，而不是反复的骗自己，“我永远不会被这些侮辱的外号所伤”它们当然会伤害你。但是我们的生活本来就是如此，不断在喜怒哀乐之间平衡反复更少的回味痛苦体验更多的美。

00:18

There's so many of you. 

00:24

When I was a kid, I hid my heart under the bed, because my mother said, "If you're not careful, someday someone's going to break it." Take it from me: Under the bed is not a good hiding spot. I know because I've been shot down so many times, I get altitude sickness just from standing up for myself. But that's what we were told. "Stand up for yourself." And that's hard to do if you don't know who you are. We were expected to define ourselves at such an early age, and if we didn't do it, others did it for us. Geek. Fatty. Slut. Fag. 

01:02

And at the same time we were being told what we were, we were being asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I always thought that was an unfair question. It presupposes that we can't be what we already are. We were kids. 

01:17

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a man. I wanted a registered retirement savings plan that would keep me in candy long enough to make old age sweet. 

01:26

When I was a kid, I wanted to shave. Now, not so much. 

01:33

When I was eight, I wanted to be a marine biologist. When I was nine, I saw the movie "Jaws," and thought to myself, "No, thank you." 

01:41

And when I was 10, I was told that my parents left because they didn't want me. When I was 11, I wanted to be left alone. When I was 12, I wanted to die. When I was 13, I wanted to kill a kid. When I was 14, I was asked to seriously consider a career path. 

01:55

I said, "I'd like to be a writer." 

01:57

And they said, "Choose something realistic." 

02:00

So I said, "Professional wrestler." 

02:04

And they said, "Don't be stupid." 

02:06

See, they asked me what I wanted to be, then told me what not to be. 

02:11

And I wasn't the only one. We were being told that we somehow must become what we are not, sacrificing what we are to inherit the masquerade of what we will be. I was being told to accept the identity that others will give me. 

02:25

And I wondered, what made my dreams so easy to dismiss? Granted, my dreams are shy, because they're Canadian. 

02:37

My dreams are self-conscious and overly apologetic. They're standing alone at the high school dance, and they've never been kissed. See, my dreams got called names too. Silly. Foolish. Impossible. But I kept dreaming. I was going to be a wrestler. I had it all figured out. I was going to be The Garbage Man. 

02:59

My finishing move was going to be The Trash Compactor. My saying was going to be, "I'm taking out the trash!" 

03:13

And then this guy, Duke "The Dumpster" Droese, stole my entire shtick. 

03:21

I was crushed, as if by a trash compactor. 

03:27

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

03:31

Poetry. 

03:34

Like a boomerang, the thing I loved came back to me. One of the first lines of poetry I can remember writing was in response to a world that demanded I hate myself. From age 15 to 18, I hated myself for becoming the thing that I loathed: a bully. 

03:49

When I was 19, I wrote, "I will love myself despite the ease with which I lean toward the opposite." 

03:58

Standing up for yourself doesn't have to mean embracing violence. 

04:03

When I was a kid, I traded in homework assignments for friendship, then gave each friend a late slip for never showing up on time, and in most cases, not at all. I gave myself a hall pass to get through each broken promise. And I remember this plan, born out of frustration from a kid who kept calling me "Yogi," then pointed at my tummy and said, "Too many picnic baskets." Turns out it's not that hard to trick someone, and one day before class, I said, "Yeah, you can copy my homework," and I gave him all the wrong answers that I'd written down the night before. He got his paper back expecting a near-perfect score, and couldn't believe it when he looked across the room at me and held up a zero. I knew I didn't have to hold up my paper of 28 out of 30, but my satisfaction was complete when he looked at me, puzzled, and I thought to myself, "Smarter than the average bear, motherfucker." 

04:58

This is who I am. This is how I stand up for myself. 

05:05

When I was a kid, I used to think that pork chops and karate chops were the same thing. I thought they were both pork chops. My grandmother thought it was cute, and because they were my favorite, she let me keep doing it. Not really a big deal. One day, before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees, I fell out of a tree and bruised the right side of my body. I didn't want to tell my grandmother because I was scared I'd get in trouble for playing somewhere I shouldn't have been. The gym teacher noticed the bruise, and I got sent to the principal's office. From there, I was sent to another small room with a really nice lady who asked me all kinds of questions about my life at home. I saw no reason to lie. As far as I was concerned, life was pretty good. I told her, whenever I'm sad, my grandmother gives me karate chops. 

06:00

This led to a full-scale investigation, and I was removed from the house for three days, until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruises. News of this silly little story quickly spread through the school, and I earned my first nickname: Porkchop. To this day, I hate pork chops. 

06:25

I'm not the only kid who grew up this way, surrounded by people who used to say that rhyme about sticks and stones, as if broken bones hurt more than the names we got called, and we got called them all. So we grew up believing no one would ever fall in love with us, that we'd be lonely forever, that we'd never meet someone to make us feel like the sun was something they built for us in their toolshed. So broken heartstrings bled the blues, and we tried to empty ourselves so we'd feel nothing. Don't tell me that hurts less than a broken bone, that an ingrown life is something surgeons can cut away, that there's no way for it to metastasize; it does. 

07:01

She was eight years old, our first day of grade three when she got called ugly. We both got moved to the back of class so we would stop getting bombarded by spitballs. But the school halls were a battleground. We found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day. We used to stay inside for recess, because outside was worse. Outside, we'd have to rehearse running away, or learn to stay still like statues, giving no clues that we were there. In grade five, they taped a sign to the front of her desk that read, "Beware of dog." 

07:29

To this day, despite a loving husband, she doesn't think she's beautiful, because of a birthmark that takes up a little less than half her face. Kids used to say, "She looks like a wrong answer that someone tried to erase, but couldn't quite get the job done." And they'll never understand that she's raising two kids whose definition of beauty begins with the word "Mom," because they see her heart before they see her skin, because she's only ever always been amazing. 

07:56

He was a broken branch grafted onto a different family tree, adopted, not because his parents opted for a different destiny. He was three when he became a mixed drink of one part left alone and two parts tragedy, started therapy in eighth grade, had a personality made up of tests and pills, lived like the uphills were mountains and the downhills were cliffs, four-fifths suicidal, a tidal wave of antidepressants, and an adolescent being called "Popper," one part because of the pills, 99 parts because of the cruelty. He tried to kill himself in grade 10 when a kid who could still go home to Mom and Dad had the audacity to tell him, "Get over it." As if depression is something that could be remedied by any of the contents found in a first-aid kit. 

08:45

To this day, he is a stick of TNT lit from both ends, could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends in the moment before it's about to fall, and despite an army of friends who all call him an inspiration, he remains a conversation piece between people who can't understand sometimes being drug-free has less to do with addiction and more to do with sanity. 

09:05

We weren't the only kids who grew up this way. To this day, kids are still being called names. The classics were "Hey, stupid," "Hey, spaz." Seems like every school has an arsenal of names getting updated every year. And if a kid breaks in a school and no one around chooses to hear, do they make a sound? Are they just background noise from a soundtrack stuck on repeat, when people say things like, "Kids can be cruel." Every school was a big top circus tent, and the pecking order went from acrobats to lion tamers, from clowns to carnies, all of these miles ahead of who we were. We were freaks -- lobster-claw boys and bearded ladies, oddities juggling depression and loneliness, playing solitaire, spin the bottle, trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal, but at night, while the others slept, we kept walking the tightrope. It was practice, and yes, some of us fell. 

10:03

But I want to tell them that all of this is just debris left over when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought we used to be, and if you can't see anything beautiful about yourself, get a better mirror, look a little closer, stare a little longer, because there's something inside you that made you keep trying despite everyone who told you to quit. You built a cast around your broken heart and signed it yourself, "They were wrong." Because maybe you didn't belong to a group or a clique. Maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything. Maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth to show-and-tell, but never told, because how can you hold your ground if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it? You have to believe that they were wrong. They have to be wrong. Why else would we still be here? 

10:54

We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog because we see ourselves in them. We stem from a root planted in the belief that we are not what we were called. We are not abandoned cars stalled out and sitting empty on some highway, and if in some way we are, don't worry. We only got out to walk and get gas. We are graduating members from the class of We Made It, not the faded echoes of voices crying out, "Names will never hurt me." Of course they did. 

11:27

But our lives will only ever always continue to be a balancing act that has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty.