Dear Project,          

I’m maybe just a little boy (twenty-one) still naive, but I want to continue to dream of having a decent life and also of finding a guy who loves me well. When there's a guy whom I like and who makes my heart beat, my life is really upset, I always think about that guy, it's as if I always had him in front of me. My friends tell that I'm too romantic, and I'm really so. I also come to cry at night but not for my loneliness but because I think that that guy can be alone while he might be with me. Maybe that guy would not even want to stay with me, but I go on fantasizing about him, I build all the talk I could do and that one he could do, I study the attitudes I should take to make him comfortable and so many other things of this kind. A few months ago I fell in love with a guy, I had done a thousand searches on him, I also dah searched for the smallest traces he could have left in Internet and in practice I had find many elements of his life, then, in the end, news that did not have to come, came like a lightning strike. In his profile, he stated he was straight, and became crazy for a girl! For me it was a catastrophe, a dream was shattered. I had believed in that dream, I had thought it was realistic, and instead he “became crazy for a girl!” Until now my life has been completely devoted to study, but not just for college, I really enjoy reading and reading everything. From scientific journals to poetry. I filled my house with books and read them almost all. I have few friends, I should say I have only two, because it is objectively so. They do not know I'm gay and they will not know for sure. I wonder every day whether my wishes will ever become reality and I have the terror that time passes and that nothing concrete can be achieved. For the moment I can only fantasize because I'm too much afraid of reality, or, I'm too much afraid of those disappointments that, according to what I read in your forum, depress many guys, I’m afraid that such disappointments can, before or after, arrive for me as well. For the moment I'm waiting, I do not know exactly for who or what, and I try to avoid dreaming too much, I try to build an alternative life, where there is no boyfriend, no gay relationship, no gay friendships, but there is something different like study, work, personal commitment. You can also live a life without real gay content, in the end being gay is not everything, it does not define the individual, but it's just a quality.

I have my friends, and I think they are all straight, I know their girlfriends, they do not ask me questions and I do not ask them. We are talking about things that only affect me marginally, but to overcome the sense of loneliness it’s enough.

There is another question that seems unimportant, but it is decisive: I'm not the classic Californian gym guy to put on the front page, no! I'm a very normal guy, so to speak, and maybe in some ways even a bit below the average. I have had complexes on this since I was a little more than a child. I've never been to a gym, especially for the fear of the dressing room, which is my great fantasy and also my great fear, because there you can see naked guys, but you also have to be naked, and I could never do this.

I have often asked myself whether my being shy and pudic is not actually derived from the fear of sex, but I do not think so. I think that with my boyfriend I would have no problem, but I should need love, true love, I should feel good with him. I could never have sex with a stranger, not even if he was the most beautiful guy in the world, my dream is a sweet boy, who strives to understand me and to love me, who is not ashamed to tell me it, and who do not think I can be useful just for sex, but I hope he could be interested in my person as a guy who has problems in all fields. When I write these things I feel naive, terribly naive. I think that in the gay world there are a lot of people less more complicated than I’m, and I think that it is right that those people can see their dreams come true, and then I am sorry for my destiny, that I see, unfortunately, as a fate of solitude. I have no courage, I think long before acting, and often, after thinking a lot, I do not act at all. I never take the initiative, I expect that things come from outside but I also know very well that such an attitude will not produce anything good.

Before sending you this email I thought about it a thousand times, I wrote it many times, corrected, modified, I weighed the words, I was careful, almost maniacally careful not to put things that could put my privacy at risk but still now I do not know if I'll send you the mail. And I do not even know what to expect from you.

I confess that I'm afraid but also anxious to see what's going to happen.

I stop here, before that little bit of courage left behind could vanish. Thanks for everything.