Swish

Have you ever read something that hits so close to home, like someone has been rooting around in your private thoughts or reading your diary, that it's really, really uncomfortable? I just experienced such a feeling while reading Swish, squirming through a LOT of it from painful discomfort, both in seeing my own flaws writ on paper and from wondering WHAT IS JOSH DEHRER DOING IN MY MIIIND.

Though the details of our two lives are radically different, of course, his psychology and fears and neuroses are astoundingly similar to my own: the over-thinking, the need to be liked, the yearning for validation, the crippling anxiety about... everything, the insecurity, the conviction that you're just a totally crap as a gay man. Seriously, if you want to have an idea of what goes through my head, read the book. It's great anyway, BTW, by turns heartbreaking (the stuff about his mother and the ex-gay chapter? *OOOOF*) and funny, so you should read it for that, too.