Paper books versus kindles . Reading sitting up versus laying down . Those two topics are actually in our FAQ and are on a weekly rotation on Sunday as autoposted topics , so feel free to report posts like that if you see them . <| sep |> UNT ' s violation occurred last year , unless there were more . <| sep |> I have a habit of researching every amusement park on the planet at strange times of the night . Not even sure why , I don ' t like going to them that much . <| sep |> There ' s an excellent book called Denial My 25 Years Without a Soul that gives some really well written insight as to what growing up gay is like . It ' s a preshort book and only a couple bucks , I ' ve read reviews from straight people that said it was the first time they ' d ever truly understood what it ' s like to grow up gay . As far as personal experiences go , you ' ll find a lot of us had experiences that ran a similar course , oddly a lot of it is driven by internal thought processes as most of us didn ' t have any experience with gay people as kids , we all sort of came to the same conclusions independently that lead us to keep our thoughts and sexuality a secret . I started to notice boys more around 12 ish , but at the time I thought it was because I was genuinely interested in being friends . I was a nerdy kid , and this was coincidentally the age I started socializing more , so I just thought those feelings were some desire for friendship . They got more intense and I started feeling jealousy towards these guys , either because I wasn ' t them or because we weren ' t friends , I don ' t know exactly . Then I started to realize oh no , I like him . and dread set in . I wanted so badly to just be normal . I wanted to like girls , I tried to force myself to . I beat myself up over it , I considered myself broken , and worst of all I was deathly afraid of anybody ever finding out . I couldn ' t say the word gay , not even in my head , until years later . At this point I ' m probably 13 and in the 7 th grade , and you end up growing up pretty quick . I couldn ' t get out of my own head I couldn ' t reconcile that I was different and no amount of effort could change it . So I made a promise to myself if anybody ever found out , I would kill myself . It wasn ' t a cry for help , I never even told anybody about that I just quietly came up with a plan in case I needed to act on it quick . Its a lot for a kid to deal with on their own , and to feel like there ' s no support , etc . In a year time frame I went from being an oblivious happygolucky kid to a broken and depressed kid just trying to get by . I can ' t reiterate enough that while it may sound melodramatic , this was my experience , and I kept it all to myself , nobody ever knew this dark side of me I was trying to keep hidden . This is why it ' s so utterly important for there to be visibility in the gay community , why celebrities publicly coming out is such a huge deal , and why normalizing gay by giving sitcom characters gay storylines and having a gay romantic interest in a movie makes a huge difference in the lives of gay kids . Had gay topics been normalized when I was a kid and if I had the slightest gay role model or knew of a celebrity that was gay and successful and living a normal life , I doubt I would have experienced most of that stuff . Perhaps it ' s not helpful , or the answer you ' re looking for , but my story isn ' t unique and this was early 2000 ' s so it ' s not like I grew up in some backwards era . I think the selfhatred and selfimposed restrictions on enjoying and experiencing life are the root of why so many gay adult men have mental health issues . Spend a few days in this sub and you ' ll see what I ' m talking about myself included ! I struggled with depression and selfimage issues well into adulthood .