I look at this photo, and it stirs something deep inside me. Something raw. Something I've suppressed ever since I can remember realizing that I'm different from other guys.

This is what I want. I want to feel so much of that passion that I have never allowed myself to feel for all these years. I want to express myself and all I have within me. I want to tell people what I go through everyday and not be condemned and judged and hated. I want to pour out my heart because I have all these feelings and emotions that can't be accepted, and it builds up within me and begins to burn as anger.

Do you know what it's like? That impossible anger strangling your grief, until the memory of your loved one is just poison in your veins, and one day you catch yourself wishing the person you love had never existed, so you'd be spared your pain.

But in the end, I just want to love and be loved by that person.

And God would call me to deny myself that?

I just don't understand.

To all my straight friends, you have no idea how I feel. You have no idea what it means to love someone and know that you can't ever be with that person or tell that person how you feel. To know that you can't tell anyone how you feel, and all you can do is hold it inside and let it eat away at you. To love someone and know that no one would ever accept your love or even try to understand the concept of it. To be so in love and yet so lost because of it. I scorn you and your claims that love is hard. You know nothing. You have no idea what hard means.

Why, God? Why can't I love like everyone else? Why do they get to be "normal" and be able to love who they want? Why do they get to have it easy?

Why?

How long must I deny myself? How long before you pull me from this ungodly existence?

How long?