There may be more traumatic experiences in life than discovering that you are gay while growing up Catholic in the west of Scotland. Perhaps a young vegetarian in Texas would sympathise… or a lap dancer in Tehran.
After years of watching The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City and preferring the products of Habitat and Ikea to Adidas and Puma, you finally acknowledge that there may be trouble ahead.
What to do, though?
Even if you tell your parents gently that you are having issues with your sexual identity, you know that they will either pretend they didn't hear you or that you should seek counsel from the parish priest. You might as well tell him that all this time he thought you were human you were really a horse. If he's not actually gay himself he'll simply say: "Take two paracetamol and lie down until the feeling goes away."
This is why we really ought not to be surprised by the number of gay men who continue to join the Catholic priesthood. Suddenly, a lifetime of celibate service in the church becomes rather appealing. What better way to submerge your sinful sexual desires and assuage your Catholic guilt than to become a priest?
After all, they never have sex so your exotic and unusual sexuality will never become an issue.
But life can rarely be compartmentalised quite as simply as that. And so from being a troubled adolescent you become an unhappy, lonely and resentful man. You continue to serve the church and care for those whom God has sent you as best you can.
Inside, though, you die a little more each time the Vicar of Christ and St Peter's successor tells the world that you are a grotesque, an abnormality, a freak show.
This is a chilling time to be Catholic and gay in Scotland. For some of the rest of us it is simply depressing. My beloved church is not enjoying its finest hour as it steps up its opposition to the SNP government's plans to permit same-sex marriages.
The church, led by Cardinal Keith Patrick O'Brien, as wise and gentle as senior clergy come, believes that the unique importance of marriage in the world will be damaged and undermined if the gift is extended to two people of the same sex.
The church has no option other than to express this belief. The sacrament of marriage is at the core of every Christian belief and reflects the sacred relationship between Jesus, their saviour, and His church. It is a relationship that is the font of all life and, as such, is validated and renewed when the parents' physical love may lead to the gift of children.
To express opposition to same-sex marriage plans by upholding this sacred belief is not homophobic. Yet the hysterical and shrill condemnation directed at the cardinal and the church for stating the church's 2,000-year-old teaching demonstrates that in modern, enlightened Scotland to be an orthodox Christian is anathema to the secular humanists who hold sway in each of our main political parties.
Yet the rhetoric coming from the hierarchy is troubling for Catholics such as me, who believe that the church must always be on the side of the poor and the alienated; those who have had their hearts broken or those who are unjustly treated. The church points out that only a few hundred same-sex couples sought to have their unions and their human rights protected by a civil partnership. This, they say, proves that there is hardly an overwhelming popular desire for that, let alone a marriage ceremony.
Yet if so few people would seek the status of marriage to be conferred on their partnership, then why are we so threatened?
The government has already ring-fenced the church's right not to conduct these ceremonies.
And as non-church weddings are not considered to be the real thing by the church then, effectively, Christian marriage is not being undermined.
There is a much more fundamental challenge here to the Catholic church. How can it provide spiritual and pastoral leadership to the many thousands of its gay members while using words such as "grotesque" and "disordered" to describe their sexuality?
My gay friends did not choose to be gay. They fully believe that this is how God had intended them to be and that their homosexuality is part of God's plan for their lives.
They did not become gay by irresponsibly attending too many costume musicals and drinking more than the recommended number of strawberry daiquiris. Nor did they wilfully expose themselves to gay culture (whatever that is).
The Catholic church now accepts that people are born gay or, if you like, God made them that way. So if two of God's gay children, made in His image and likeness, are seeking to have their union blessed by His church, then where does that leave it? There is a dilemma.
The debate over same-sex marriage has divided this country and it has been unpleasant to behold. The SNP have blundered badly by making the issue a political imperative. They know it and they are lying if they tell you otherwise.
There was simply no appetite in Scotland for same-sex marriage; the government would not have stood or fallen on the issue and nor would it have increased the human rights of gay people, all of whom are guaranteed under same-sex legislation.
At present, my church's position seems to be this: we accept that you are gay but this is, somehow, a divine aberration. So we'll ignore it so long as you refrain from any beastliness, shenanigans or malarkey.
But deploying intemperate and uncharitable terminology causes great pain and distress to those in its flock who are gay and also sincere in their faith.