Good afternoon. 

      Well, I don't often do this kind of thing, but I'm pretty sure that I should start off with an introduction. So hello, my name is Nico Grey. I'm not going to be overly formal with you guys, sorry it's just not my way. I'm not going to be like other speakers you've probably had and say to keep your questions till the end because I, in fact, don't mind answering them, and I'm sure by now that just from my appearance on this stage that more than half of you have a few already. I'll start off with the easy ones, I'm twenty-one, yes I was married, yes I am gay, and yes, if you guys didn't guess this already, I am diagnosed with Cancer. 

      I was asked to come here today not only to talk about confidence and acceptance, but also about my own experiences. I've come through alot of struggles in my twenty-one years, things that i didn't think I could get through. I was born in Italy and until I seven, I lived in a little run down house with my brother Jake and our parents. I didn't grow up with shopping trips to Toys R Us or the mall, I didn't go to the movies or play video games or eat popcorn, I didn't have that luxury. We were poor, my father was a member of the gangs and my mother worked three jobs to keep us alive. One was as a waitress, one was as a housemaid and the other she worked at night when she brought different men home with her. I'm not proud of my father, he was abusive and he was rude, but I will forever be proud of my mother, she stayed with him because she had nowhere else to go and because she had me, me and Jake. My mother died in our house when I was seven, she was shot in front of us when our father was drunk and angry as he normally was. So I took Jake and I ran, we hid in the woods till the next morning and found our Aunts house the next day. She took us in until I was nine and Jake was six. Then she couldn't take care of us anymore, her health was failing and she had become too sick so we were sent to an orphanage. 

      Now I know this may seem like a long story and somewhat unimportant to why I am here but bear with me, to understand a man sometimes you have to walk a bit in his shoes.

      Our first full year at the orphanage and Jake became ill. I was with him when he died four months later, three days before his seventh birthday. By that point I had had enough, I ran away for the second time in my life. I lived on the streets for almost two years. During those years I began to feel ill, I lost weight, and near the end, pain was my constant friend. My aunt still had medical rights over me and her social workers tracked me down brought me into the hospital where I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. My aunt, who did not believe in modern medicine, refused to let me get treated. I found that I had grandparents living in America and when they heard my story they claimed guardianship over me and brought me to the states. I was submitted to a hospital in Virginia where they lived and when they died two years later I was moved to Wisconsin. I had been in remission for almost six years before my life really took a turn. Coming down the steps of my college one day I fell, suddenly and abruptly and I couldn't see anything and I couldn't hear and I was terrified. I was rushed to the hospital and the doctors announced that the cancer had flared back up again. 

      Stick with me you guys, I know it might be early in the day and you guys probably are honestly just here to get out of class and thats alright, thats okay, i get it. But I want you all to leave here and have learned at least one thing, so stick with me. We're almost there.

      You know how people tell you that the greatest things happen when you least expect them too? Well, yea, it's true. My greatest thing was a young man named Aden Grey. He was my roommate in the hospital, diagnosed with brain cancer. He was my best friend, then my lover, and a week or so before he died we were married. He was dying, of course he was, so was I. I still am. The cancer mutated, spread to other places and I had three surgeries to try and remove tumors from my brain. But that's not my point. That's not the point of me telling any of you this. 

      My point is that you are special just the way you are. You can be loved, just the way you are. When I lost my left leg I could barely look in the mirror for weeks, but you know who told me every night that I was beautiful? Aden. When my hair fell out and I could barely move in bed, you know who told me I was strong? Aden. You know who accepted me no matter what happened? even if it was two in the morning and I would lie in bed with tears in my eyes, trying not to show how much pain I was in? Aden. So you know what I'm telling you guys? It's okay to break, it's okay to need help, it's okay to let down those walls for a second and take off your mask and it's okay to be you. Aden helped me find that confidence in myself to look in the mirror everyday and see something worth fighting for. And you know what? High School is tough, I know, I've been there, it's not easy. The sports, the musicals, the classes, the popularity contest that seems to be as much a part of this school as the walls are. Acceptance here is about as rare as an A++ on an APUSH exam.

      But let me tell you a few things I have learned. You don't need to be accepted by anyone else but yourself, and if other people accept you the way you are? Great! But if they don't its not the end of the world. Everytime someone comes to visit a family member in the hospital and I'm down in the common room painting or reading I get these looks. I get them all the time. These looks that say "oh my god look at that guy, he's completely bald." Then they will predictably scan the rest of my body as they notice that I'm in a wheelchair and their thoughts will go like this. "He's bald and in a wheelchair and holy crap he's missing two legs." Now sometimes i'll laugh because I can read it on their faces, and sometimes I'll hold it inside because it doesn't bother me anymore. My body is what it is and there is nothing in the world that I can do to change that. you don't need someone else's acceptance to be you, you just need to have self-confidence, you need to be able to laugh off the small things because in six or seven years it won't matter who was dating who, or what dress you wore to homecoming, or how your hair looked on the first day of school. What will matter is how you think of yourself, what you will do with your life, and where you know you will go. It took me a while to figure that out. I admit, it really did. 

      You know when I lost my legs I thought that that pain was unbearable, but I was wrong. When Aden died, that was the pain that was unbearable. When he died I didn't know what to do. I was completely lost. The person that I was fighting so hard to live for was gone, I felt like I had nothing left to live for. And i'm not proud of it but for a while there I did give up. I didn't want to face a single day without him, I didn't want to watch another sunrise if he wasn't right there to watch it with me. That was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. And you know sometimes i'll get these looks from people when I tell them my story, it's pity. But I can tell you right now,  I don't want that. I don't want to be looked at as different, just because I've got faulty lungs, no legs and a body that can't seem to stop shaking, I'm just as human as the rest of you. I'm just a normal guy. It's that immediate reaction in our minds to classify people into normal and strange and then by race and then gender and sexual preference that ends up causing problems like bullying, or harassment, or lack of self confidence. This generation is incredible, there are so many fresh young minds but they are scared to be themselves because people have taught them that they have to conform, they have to fit in. Well I'm here telling you otherwise! You DO NOT have to fit in, you DO NOT have to conform, you are perfect just the way you are. You are smart and brave and talented and capable of things that you couldn't even imagine. 

     And if there's one thing that you leave here remembering, remember this. It's something that Aden taught me, something that without him I would never have known. As long as you have hope, you have something. You have another sunrise. And that.... that is worth fighting for. 

Thank you.