Confession of a freak

I feel that I have to share my story and I hope that some of you will recognize yourselves in it, because I feel very alone in this. And if you don't, feel free to share your thoughts anyway. It's confusing, fragmented and too long.I was a bit girly as a kid: long hair, earring, didn't shy girly stuff, etc. My mom didn't have a problem with it, but my dad didn't like it much and would try to make me act more like a boy in various ways. I always felt like a boy, though. A pretty stereotypical gay boy growing up, I would assume.In first grade I fell in love with a boy. This is the first gay feeling I can remember. Fast forward a few years to age ten or so. At this point I was getting more interested in exploring sex and thought quite a lot about getting close to boys I liked. Around this point I had my first sexual experiences with a friend I managed to persuade. We would do sexual things regularly for a couple of years until we went separate ways. I don't think he was interested in sex to be honest, but he still did it. There were other boys I liked more, but they would never agree to anything like that.During this time I become very depressed and anxious. I realized that my feelings weren't normal and that I couldn't tell anyone about the things me and my friend did. There was also a lot trouble in my family. My parents were fighting all the time and my dad was an alcoholic: Sometimes he would lash out at me for being difficult, like kick me because I didn't put my socks on or some other bullshit; other times he would get drunk and cry about how miserable he was, expecting me to console him. This was mixed into a pretty normal childhood. Around age eleven my dad took me to a barber and forced me to cut my hair as some kind of rite of passage. I cried my eyes out when we came home, and I believe I started to act more boyish after that and in a sense lost a bit of my self.Things started to get more heated at home. One night my mom was away and I was left alone with my drunk dad, because my older sisters didn't want to be around the drunkard. I don't remember the series of events, but a neighbor ended up at our door step, a fight broke out, and I ended up threatening to kill my dad with a kitchen knife. The police came and he was locked up for a while. No one ever checked how I felt, so I felt very abandoned at this time. My parents split up after another event soon after that one and I moved to the city with my mother and sisters at thirteen.I was still miserable most of the time, but my teens were probably the best time of my life. I was a bit of a loner, but me and a couple of close friends would roam around town and get involved in all kinds of shenanigans. For a couple of years I denied my homosexuality and experimented a with girls. I can pinpoint the exact moment when I finally gave up and decided, "I'm gay". I was fifteen and watched a slightly younger boy and girl make out on the floor in some guys' house. All I could think was how much I wished I was in her position. It was a relief.I never touched a girl after that. My closest friends probably would've thought it was okay if I admitted that I was gay, and I was asked many times if I were, but I just lied. I never told anyone about anything and barely bothered to care about anything. School was a disaster. Because I didn't show up for school much, my science teacher once decided to take me with him to buy stuff for the lab to "compensate" for my absence. It seemed a bit suspicious, so I went along with it. In the car back he started touching my leg and eventually jerked me off on a parking lot. I didn't see him after that. I guess he had quit his job and saw the opportunity.During the rest of my teens I had sex with several men I met here and there. The youngest was about twenty and the oldest ... old. It was something I enjoyed. I liked the sex and the excitement from the meetings, but I also liked the closeness a few of them gave me. Some were just interested in sex, but a few were quite caring. I stopped doing this when one of them called me at home and my sister answered. It was the old guy and it freaked me out quite a bit. Only a couple of times have I hooked up after this.At the end of my teens I stopped seeing my friends due to conflicts and the destructive relationship we had. Instead I spent most of my time trying to make a future for myself. Despite my sexual encounters with men, I've always been more attracted to boys. Not prepubescent boys, but boys in their early teens. This started to become more apparent the older I got. I hated myself very much for liking boys and it took several years for me to come to terms with it. I finally realized what matters: While I definitely am attracted to boys, I don't have it in me to hurt another person. (It's also hard for me to imagine how anyone could deny that boys can be very beautiful.)I'm in my thirties now and still attracted to boys. I have little interest in men closer to my age and that bothers me a lot. I wish I could just release myself and become an ordinary gay man, but I'm afraid that I would just end up fooling myself and hurting some poor guy. I often wonder if my history, suppressed feelings, and self-loathing fucked up my orientation or if I'm just a genetic freak. Maybe I'm confusing my fatherly instincts with sexual attraction. Since I'm so suspicious and secretive I've rarely had any normal, close relationships in my life, so it's hard to tell. As it is now, I just use distractions to keep my shit together while i struggle to find an identity I can live with. Although I identify as a gay person, I find it hard to fit into the gay image.I will end with a question: I've long identified as gay, but is there place for people like me in the gay community or are we not wanted?