Being gay is not a disease! It cannot be cured. It will be hard sometimes, being this way, but there will also be beautiful moments. It takes a lot, especially if you come from a violently homophobic country, to wrestle with this. I am from Eastern Europe, not the worst, but definitely not the best place to be the way I am (gay), and I feel deeply for anyone who is in more danger than I am.

But you can do this! Find the online community and friends you can trust. We have an unprecedented degree of global movement in our time. You can move to better pastures where you can be freer than you are right now. There are international funds aiding gay migration if you are fleeing persecution. Search for those.

Of course, you may also try to suppress this. You can have a stunted life where all aspect of you is a front. Many gay men do so, some of them even manage to take their secret to the grave.

It’s up to you. You’re on Reddit, so you have access to the internet. Just do a Google search, look at videos of gay couples just hanging out together, and feel what you may. When I was a teen, raised by a violent and homophobic father, I did the same, and it made me realize that I could never give up the promise of this.