When you feel like you are different than everyone else in the world, you spend your life seeking someone who might know why you are different.
In the spring of 1993, nearly 30 years ago, I found myself lying on a greasy, tile floor in the back of a McDonald’s restaurant in Brockton, Massachusetts, a gun pressed against my head, the trigger being pulled.
Less than a minute of violence and terror around which my life has since revolved.
I can talk about that night today. I can describe it to friends and strangers and even theaters full of people. I can tell the story in astounding detail.
That alone is a triumph.
But understanding is not knowing. My wife, Elysha, understands me better than any human being on the planet. She can describe and explain me with a clarity that escapes even me. She understands the contours of my heart and the workings of my mind like no one before.
But knowing? Knowing what that night on that tile floor really means to me? Knowing what it has done to me?
Since that night back in 1993, I have looked for someone who knows. I’ve searched for someone whose core is like my own. Not only someone who understands me, but someone who knows what it’s like to be me.
Yesterday, I watched this short film. Just seven minutes in length. Longer than my commute to work.
As I did, I wept.
I worried that Charlie, sitting across the room, might worry when he heard his father crying, but when I looked, I saw that he was wearing headphones, eating crackers, and watching a movie.
He couldn’t hear a thing.
So as he watched, I watched, too. And cried.
I found someone who knows.
