I just feel being gay is like playing life on "really hard" mode, while everyone else is playing on "very easy"
You said you like video games right? Well the try looking at life this way: On "very easy," you get all the best stuff with very, very little effort. It's kind of fun but not really, sort of exciting but mostly dull, occasionally interesting but mainly pointless, and in the end, after you've beaten the game you realize that the experience in easy mode really wasn't all that enjoyable at all and that you probably just wasted your time. Now try "hard," where it takes far more effort to succeed at the same goal, but with an end result that's significantly more satisfying and, more importantly, a gameplay experience that you'll remember long into the future. Which one sounds more fun? Take that answer and apply it to real life.
Sure, straight life probably is easier for SOME, but (to reference video games again), some people can't even get through "easy mode". You can't generalize that to be straight is to live an easy "normal" life and that to be gay is anything otherwise. Frankly, life is (
cliche alert) what you make it. With the exception of marriage, you can, and deserve, to have everything in a gay life that you could in a straight one, and in no way does that take away from your "normality".
Trust me dude, I know exactly where you're coming from. I'm your same age with what seems like very similar friends to yours (minus the gay jokes) and my gayness was a shock to everyone. Less than a year ago, I still hadn't come to terms with my "gay thingy," and not too long before that I quite literally hated myself for it (to the point where I was willing to give up living altogether, totally counter the type of person that I had always been before then and am now). Even now, after spending time here at JUB (which helped to degree far beyond what words could even express), the realization that I'm not what everyone expects of, and assumes about, me hits hard. At times I still do wish i didn't have to be different, but then I'm reminded that it's something that I can't change, and would honestly never want to. I'm happier than I've ever been and do like being gay, not because I am gay (does that make sense?) because now I know how to love all of myself, not just the parts that fit into the future everyone had planned out for me. It's never going to be easy to accept that you are not what society considers typical. You are a minority and that's okay. As lube said, we all are minorities in one way or another and that's what makes us all great.
I have a request of you: please at least try to love yourself for who you are, and not worry so much about what you are. And come out when you're ready in the way that you see fit, no dramatic Facebook status updates necessary.
When you say you feel like your the only gay guy "like yourself," I assume you mean not effeminate in the sense of stereotypically gay men. If that is the case, you are very much mistaken. I'm like you, as are soooo many of the guys here. That said, the guys not "like yourself" are just as great. Stereotypes are what they are. If you fit one, then that's who you are, if not that's cool too. Don't limit yourself in the types of people you associate with or I guarantee you'll miss out on lots of opportunities for great friendships.
Keep in mind, we're here at JUB too, so we understand you.
lol.