I've got to let off steam.

I like being gay and it's how I've always been but people can say and have said such horrible things. I'm 17 and I've been facing up to being gay since I was 14, although it's hard because no-one knows about it (only my best friend and another friend I trust).

Maybe people suspect I'm gay, because I've never had a girlfriend. I'd like to have someone who'd love me and not just want sex and who if I said I was gay wouldn't drop me because they were afraid of accepting it. I've been with friends who seemed to want to do something with me, but I wasn't brave enough to tell them I liked them. And now in the last few days I've realised many things that I never wanted to know.

I've been in love with my best friend for the last two and half years. I've never been able to tell him. I imagined it would be so beautiful if he and I were together, but that was shattered when he told me that a girl was expecting his baby. And he told me with relish about all the gory details… I listened, but inside my soul shrivelled up. They're not together and they don't even see each other. But this news changed things, because I adore him but there's never been any expression of love between us.

To tell you the truth I did kiss him once. He was asleep and he noticed, but in the morning he left without saying a word. And he gives me looks that really melt my heart, but it never comes to anything because if I get near him he moves away from me. It's as if he's saying "Yes, but don't get too close."

I love him. I have a terrible fear that I'll go to my grave without ever knowing love, or that I'll grow old and lonely, or kill myself and be just another gay teen suicide.

I'd like everyone to know what I am and that everyone in my city should know the real me, even if my parents, friends, family and schoolfriends won't speak to me any more. If that happens, the society they'll be shutting me out of will only prove it's full of rules, and guilty of far worse things than they suppose I'm guilty of.

To be gay is to love in secret, keeping quiet when they ask you about your girlfriend, shutting yourself away in your room hoping to find someone to free you from that dark corner, so you can find love and face up to hatred.

The truth is that I don't have a single hope in my life and I don't want to be alone. I want to have someone at my side who values me and loves me, who doesn't look down on me and doesn't judge my feelings.

I don't know even one gay person in my city. The nearest I know are hundreds of miles away, and they're not the age I'm looking for. I want someone as inexperienced as me so we can discover what love is together.

You can publish this if you like and, if you can, please write to me.

How difficult it is to find love
How difficult it is to forget you
How difficult my life is without you by my side
I need you!