WEBVTT

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I was almost a school shooter.

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In 1996, Denver, Colorado,
I was a student in North High.

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In a moment of pain and anger,
I almost committed a terrible atrocity.

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Growing up I'd learned early on

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there was a strange comfort
and calmness in darkness.

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I was always the new kid.

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My family was violent and aggressive,
drug-addicted parents.

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We were moving from place to place,
went to 30 or 40 different schools,

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always seemed to be going
to a new school every other week.

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You woke up at 4 o'clock
in the morning by cops,

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to run across the country to end up
at a school for a couple of weeks

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and then have to do it all again
a couple of days later.

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I was the perpetual new kid, and since I
also had such an unstable household,

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I wasn't helped by the fact that I smelled
really bad because I never had a shower,

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or didn't really have any clean clothes.

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All my clothes were dirty and torn.

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I had a weight problem. I was smart.

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I liked comic books at a time
when kids didn't really like people

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who liked comic books that much.

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So every time I went to a new school
I was in a new set of bullies.

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They'd walk up to me and shoot me
with a harpoon, like I was a whale,

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or dump food on my head 
because they said I was too fat.

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But the bullying wasn't just at school.
It happened at home a lot too.

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I was told that I was worthless
by just about everybody in my life.

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When you're told you worthless enough
you will believe it,

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then you're going to do everything
to make everybody else agree with it too.

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I wrapped that darkness around me
like a blanket, used it as a shield.

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It kept the few who agreed with me close,
but it kept everybody else away.

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I always had heard in life
that there was good and bad people.

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I must be one of the bad people.

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So I guess I'd have to just do
what I was supposed to do.

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So I got really aggressive.

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At 12 or 13-years-old 
I got really into heavy metal music,

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and I was the mosh pit
when I went to concerts.

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The abuse just never seemed to stop.

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I got into cutting around 14 or 15

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because I figured that there was all this
extreme emotion going on in my life

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I had absolutely no control over.

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I had to find some way
to find control over something

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so I took to cutting myself.

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I still have the scars to this day.

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At 15, 16 years old, I ended up homeless.

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My parents had kicked me out

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because I didn't want to deal
with their drunken fighting,

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so I was living on the streets.

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I thought I had pushed
all my other friends away,

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shoved them all away
by lying to them or stealing from them,

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doing everything that my family
taught me how to react,

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which was the completely
wrong way how to react.

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But I had no idea.
I was just doing what I was taught.

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Finally, at 16 years old, I'm sitting
in my best friend's shed,

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who I thought I'd already pushed away too
by stealing from him and lying to him.

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Lying in this shed
with the roof wide open,

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with rain pouring down on me
into a grungy chair

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that was covered in cobwebs and dirt
which hadn't been touched in months.

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And I'm sitting there with my arm 
covered in blood,

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knowing that if I didn't do something
I was going to kill myself soon.

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So, I did the only thing
I could think of to do:

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I grabbed a phonebook,
and I called social services.

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So I went to social services.

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Sadly, they didn't just bring me in there,
they also took my mom in there too,

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who happened to be one of the largest
sources of my pain growing up.

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Since she had spent her life
running from place to place

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and dealing with social workers
and police officers,

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she knew exactly what to say
to get them to believe

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that I was making it all up,

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it was just an act, 
I was just doing it for attention.

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Then they sent me home with her.

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And as they sent me home with her,
she turned to me and she said:

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"Next time, you should do a better job
and I'll buy you the razor blades."

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My heart just got ripped out
of me at that point.

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The darkness I'd been staring at
for so long, I ran headlong into it.

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I had nothing left to live for.

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I literally had nothing to lose.

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And when you have nothing to lose
you can do anything,

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and that is a terrifying thought.

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I had decided that my act
of doing something

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was I was going to express
my extreme anger and rage

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by getting a gun.

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I was going to attack either my school
or a mall food court.

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It really didn't matter which one.

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It wasn't about the people,
it was about the largest amount of damage

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in the shortest amount of time
with the least amount of security.

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Both those places were the right targets.

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So I wish I had a better story
about actually getting a gun,

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but that was actually
brother-business-like.

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There were gangbanger kids
near my school back in the mid '90s

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when gangs were still a major problem
in North Denver schools.

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This kid had seen me, he knew my family
and he'd sold drugs to them before.

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He knew that I wasn't really in school,
I was just always at school.

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He knew I wasn't a narc
or anything like that.

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I didn't know anything but a first name.
That didn't take more than that.

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I knew they had access to guns,
they talked about it all the time.

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I said: "Hey, can you get me a gun?"
"Sure, get me an ounce."

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"All right, give me three days."

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That was it.

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I was waiting to get myself a gun
so I could kill a lot of people.

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But thankfully
I wasn't alone in that darkness.

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That best friend who had saved me
when I was sleeping in the shed,

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he saw this place that I was in.

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Even though I had stolen
from him and lied to him

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and taken his belongings 
and ruined it all,

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he didn't care, he still brought me in
and showed me acts of kindness.

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Just simple acts.

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It wasn't the kind of overbearing
kindness where they say:

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"Is there anything I can do for you?

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can I do something to make you better?

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How can I help you?"

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It was just sitting down next to me.

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"Hey, would you like a meal?
Let's watch a movie."

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He treated it like it was a Tuesday.
He treated me like I was a person.

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When someone treats you like a person
when you don't even feel like a human,

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it'll change your entire world,
and it did to me.

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He stopped me with his acts of kindness
from committing that atrocity that day.

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If you see someone who's in that spot
that needs that love, give it to them.

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Love the ones you feel
deserve it the least

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because they need it the most.

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It'll help you just as much
as it helps them.

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We're in a really dangerous spot now
with this trend of arming the teachers,

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looking out for the kids who might
be a threat in schools,

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and maybe turning them in to the FBI.

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What's that going to do to a kid who's
in the position I was 25 years ago?

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Who's alone, and depressed, and abused,

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and is just sitting there hurting,

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and someone thinks that they're a threat?

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He gets turned in to the FBI,

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and one month of pain
turns into a lifetime of legal trouble

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because one person thought
he was going to be a problem.

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Instead of looking at that kid
like he's a threat,

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look at him like he might be a friend,

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like you might be able
to bring him into the fold.

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Show him that it's just a Tuesday.
Show him that he is worth it.

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Show him that he can exist in this pain
even though it's intense,

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that at the end of it, there is a light
at the end of the tunnel.

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I found my light.

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Now I'm a happy family man.
I am a father of four.

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My wife and my daughter
are in the audience today.

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(Applause)

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And even bigger than that,

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the friend who saved my life,
he's in the audience today too.

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Because friendship
doesn't ever really die.

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(Applause)

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We have to give love to the people
who we think deserve the least.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)