I know exactly how you feel kuurt because I have those same feeling all the time. When I'm at work with "the guys" and they're talking about their wives and children and daily lives I feel so out of place. I wonder what it's like to be able to go home to someone who loves you instead of my empty bed and laptop. What is it like to just have normal thoughts and feels and stuff instead of always wondering what the other people are thinking of me. It is a never ending cycle.

Hey Clockwise, I know exactly what you mean.


Would I like to be normal? Yes, and no. While I do have a lot of issues the thing is that if I were "normal" I would no longer be me. I don't not want to be me. I just want to get a few of the things that the Normals have.

I just want to go two days in a row without triggers. That would be enough for me for now...

Last night , At a party put on by a gay friend who like me, has teen kids, the topic turned to happiness and the lightness of the season. One guy talked about how in his forties he is finally able to find that place. Sure enough , like me he is a survivor. We talked about how that sense of whimsy gets buried or was never there in the first place. But it doesnt mean we cant find it, only that it may take longer or may look different from the "normal" gay men (talk about an oxymoron).

I dont know what normal may be, I have nothing or no one to base a comparison. What I can contribute to this discussion is I have worked very hard to do no harm, and to place everyone else needs before my own. I see the joy and happiness that I have given and for a brief second I think I can feel it as well, I know I'm lying to myself but I pretend anyways. I do not get anything in return other than that. I may never know what it means to be normal but from my point of view normal people are takers, users and abusers without consideration for anyone else but themselves. If this is what it means to be normal then I will gladly choose to stay abnormal. I have often observe the world as a poor orphan child looking through a glass window of a candy store and seeing children with their parents gorging themselves with all sorts of sweets and wishing that he had a penny for a stick of chewing gum.

If something like 1 in 5 men have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime, we're a pretty large minority. That makes us relatively normal, doesn't it? After all, "normal" people who have absolutely nothing that makes them some kind of minity - people who have not been abused, are heterosexual, are able-bodied, are the dominant ethnicity and religion for their country - are pretty rare. Most people are labeled "abnormal" in some way.

The problem is that us, the "abnormal" majority, don't always get along with each other. I know that before I knew about my own childhood I didn't "get" male survivors. I know that before I found out about my own sexual orientation I bullied boys who acted "gay". I might still be bigoted against some minority and not even be aware of it.

But I don't think it's healthy to think of ourselves as abnormal. We are normal. We are normal because we, like nearly everyone else in the world, have not lived ideal lives.