I don't speak for all those like me, just myself. I am your brother, your friend, your best friend, your roommate, your date, your associate... but I hide it from you. You make me. Try to understand what I am feeling: it's to be condemned by most churches as sinful, by some health professionals as pathological and curable, and by the law as criminal; it's to live two separate lives, never being able to be completely honest in either. It's listening to my friends talking about queers and making jokes about effeminate males and athletic looking females as I stand there and knowing they would say the same thing about me. It's to go along with the women/men as they watch men/women when I would rather watch people of your own gender. It's to awaken every morning, live every day, and go to sleep every night fearing discovery and/or rejection by my family, friends, co-workers.
It's dating people of the opposite gender when I really don't want to, just to maintain a cover. It's pretending to be ignorant about homosexuality and quietly listening to my straight friends display their ignorance while I dare not correct them. It's meeting someone I really like but am too afraid to find out if they're gay because they're wearing the same mask I am. It's going to a public place with my significant other and never being able to display any affection to each other. It's being taught to hate myself knowing that I cannot change, knowing I can never share that wonderful feeling of being in love with my family and most of my friends.
Anonymous