I don't even know where to begin here. I've been desperately searching for something I can read where someone understands what the hell I am going through. I don't understand it myself. I feel 20,000 different emotions in any given time. 

I'll start by saying that I am at least grateful, marriage or children never happened. I feel like the biggest idiot in the entire world because he wouldn't even label me his girlfriend for the past 8 years but I was definitely a surrogate girlfriend while he acted like a boyfriend to me. We never had sex. I feel so stupid right now because it seems so obvious...yet I'm a very analytical/behaviorally aware person. I'm in the social work field...I do it for my career. I can't even believe this is real. I legitimately thought the reason we hadn't lost our virginity to each other was because he has severely low self esteem. He's made self deprecating comments about his SIZE offhandedly so many times that I thought it was the reason he never physically initiated anything with me.

We started off being completely attracted and into each other. It was so intense and he literally changed my life overnight. We did kiss in the beginning before he told me he just wanted to remain friends. I was upset never understanding why...but this was so long ago our story only intensified from there. We turned into best friends. 
Despite him saying he didn't want to date, he was over the top romantic, spontaneous all the time with me. Always showing up at my work to see me, or outside my house day and night to take me out. We practically lived together in my room in my parent's house for years, every day together. There are thousands of more examples I could say where he acted like he loved me and felt the same. 
It became our dreaded cycle. He would act like my boyfriend (everything except physical intimacy) but even then he seemed 'excited' around me that I noticed and suggestive. We would both be so happy until I would point out to him, I loved him he seems to feel the same way, let's give this a real shot? Every time...he would explode with anger and push me away and hurt me deeply. It never made sense to me. He attended every family thing with me, we talk all day every day through text message. Life was so magical and exciting. I was so in love with him, with us. We had the deepest connection I've ever experienced. It was like he could literally read my mind with things he did sometimes. It was scary.
The cycle continued for years of him seeming to love me back, me calling him on it, him running away and gaslighting the fuck out of me to feel crazy, then we'd reunite and feel it all over again. One time he even introduced me as his kinda girlfriend when someone asked. I was enraged.
I know I have my part of the blame in this situation too, that I couldn't for the life of me cut it off with him for good in any of the times he hurt me because I didn't understand any of it. I still don't. The way he would look at me, talk about me, want me around all the time... I can't even write this without crying. 

I wish I had been stronger to stay away but I fell back to him everytime because he was my best friend and I loved him so much and we both missed each other so much. I kept trying every time to go back to him just as friends not feel any romantic feelings or pressure.We're both pretty geeky people in a social group of the same, and it seemed the norm to not really be having sex. I just figured he didn't want to ruin our friendship and he was so low in self esteem...as am I...I had been waiting for him for so long wishing to be with him that way. No doubt in my mind that it would be hot considering the chemistry we had around each other. Never once did I get the impression he wasn't feeling it too. I have plenty of platonic guy friends that I notice that behaviour with and this was always different. Always confusing. 

The hardest part...he always watched me suffer in pain and crying with despair and confusion about his actions. Never once did he feel the empathy to relieve me from my grief and confusion. Over and over he let me suffer and watch me so in love run back to him. 
Over the past couple years is where I could admit to myself that now looking back, I could see signs. Only from past 2 years, the rest are still a mystery to me. Last christmas my friends wanted to go on a cruise and he desperately wanted me to come too. This was on the last peak of him acting like my boyfriend again. I had moved further away with family and he had been driving 6hrs+ a week to see me and I would drive down for him as well. It felt undeniably like we were domesticated dating beyond a typical "best friend" relationship. So I had enough and said I can't go on this cruise without us being officially together for fear of me having drunken sobbing nights in the cabin over how romantic situations were coming up and that we weren't together. He to this day still seems to have selective memory about it, but he of course turned me down and went on the cruise anyway. I have yet to recover from that pain. The complete not being able to understand how he could be so hot and cold and so absolutely callous about my feelings. All of his high school buddies don't really give a shit about him, yet in a heartbeat he abandoned me for them.
Of ANY time, this was the time he should have told me the truth. If not YEARS before.

This past year I've still been weary and hurt about those events but distanced myself awhile and tried to come to terms with never being with him yet it didn't last long. I missed him so much and still loved him. He missed me too and before long we were back to hanging out alone again and going away on weekend trips and starting to get back to what we lost before. My feelings still hadn't changed. I was cursed with incessant hope because he never gave me proper answers. I was always confused. I feel so fucking stupid about it all but it was like we were dating for the past 8-9 years. All our friends and family saw it. No one could understand it. He seemed so obviously to love me too...what the hell was the problem?

Cut to the week before this Christmas. He ACCIDENTALLY sent me a link to an invoice from a fetish website. He never talks about sex or sexuality or anything. Always seemed very shy that way, even though he'd flirt and be suggestive with me and others. I went absolutely cold. I thought I would throw up. I didn't even understand at first what I was looking at. I had a panic and anxiety attack. I still feel traumatized from what I saw...some sort of wolf muzzle that simulates blow jobs and a suction cup dildo. I hate the fact of how angry I felt and still feel about it too. That I had waited so long for him and he knew I wanted to be with him and that I would do anything to incorporate whatever he liked...once I got through the panic and anger it was only then it dawned on me...WTF DOES THIS MEAN...is he gay? No he couldn't be! I couldn't believe it. I tossed the idea around for years but it never seemed like the answer somehow. There was no other evidence. 

I confronted him back in text asking what the fuck he just sent me. It was an accident and he was so embarrased he didn't reply to me for days. I finally asked him if he was gay. Days went by and I cried all day and night long. I finally got the text back saying "I don't think I could ever say this to your face, but yes I'm gay :'(" he went on to say that he didn't want to "lose his best friend because we have so much fun" and I was so upset so enraged...I still am. This is still so recent I can't process anything. The fact that this has all been through text and not even to my face so I can see him and hear his voice saying it, has totally fucked me up. I am haunted and traumatized by what I've seen and I'm so devastated I almost checked myself into the hospital twice because I didn't want to live anymore. To feel completely betrayed and lied to and above all...used. He said things did feel really right with me at times but not always and that he really wanted to be with me but that he would never love me the way I love him. I still can't deal with this because I am so upset that he's watched me suffer and be internally tortured and confused about what was going on for years. He let me cry and feel that I was the worthless one that I was making it all up in my head the way he was acting with me. I still feel naively upset wondering how he knows for sure when hes never been with anyone and he did seem attracted to me before. He said there was never anyone else he had feelings for either....

I am struggling so much inside because of my social work and counseling background of understanding logically the struggle of sexuality and coming out or being in the closet and thinking I should be there for him and BE the best friend...yet I am also so fucking enraged and heartbroken shattered that he didn't even have the integrity to come out to me. I had to find out from a sick accidental text. He calls me his best friend yet has lied to and used me for years, and watched me in so much pain and never once helped me out by coming clean...by wasting all my 20s I could have met someone else... Even if he only told me and wanted to remain in the closet I would never tell...but I am struggling with thoughts of him seeming like a sociopath...definitely narcissistic asshole. 

I am going to see a counselor soon. I've signed up. I feel so fucked up I can't function anymore. It's like I've lost a limb and my heart throbs in pain, yet he somehow at sometime checked out emotionally so long ago that he doesn't seem to give a shit I'm in pain or confused and needing him to at least give me the decency of saying it to my face. I have an anxiety disorder and ruminating over texts instead of hearing directly is making me totally in denial. I still don't believe it. I don't accept it. I'm not okay with it. I was a huge supporter of gay rights and have many gay friends, and right now I feel so angry and disgusted like I'm a total hypocrite of a person. 
I want him to suffer and get his karma of what he's done to me. I can't even imagine him with a man emotionally or sexually. At all. I can't see him in a relationship or wanting one. But I don't know cause he won't talk to me and help me understand anything. I don't want him to find anyone ever and remain unhappy and alone. It's all terrible things to say and feel but I just feel run over repeatedly by a truck.

I don't know how I'm going to get through this. It feels like going through withdrawal and having to cut out a drug (or toxic person) and he's hurt me so fucking much, and I still miss and love him. Like battered woman syndrome.
I've never experienced something so incredibly emotionally confusing in my life. One minute I hate him the next I'm crying and remembering everything and texting him. I don't know how to stop.

If anything too, he became even more cruel to me after the fact. We had to see mutual friends for the holidays and pretend things were okay and he ended up ignoring me at one event and taking the side of this immature bitch woman over standing by me....so how the hell am I his best friend? What is even real anymore? I feel like I can't stand every moment I try to get through. Trying to come to terms with losing my closest friend, the man I loved, the man I'll never get to be with physically, and who I wanted in my life forever. 

My friends that I've told and my family are so incredibly angry. They've seen it all. I can't really talk to them about it because they don't understand the grief and range of emotions I'm feeling. They just label it like he's a fucking asshole who used me and hurt me and led me on and I should clear cut be angry and cut him off.
Yet I still can't resist the urges to text him and I'm trying to cut him off but I just can't seem to without at least finally hearing it from him in person so I can grieve it properly. I know I must seem so incredibly stupid for having hope and going back to him. With the no sex seeming like such an obvious sign...but if you knew him it would make more sense? *sigh* I just needed to write this out because I don't know how to deal. I just get high and watch tv and try to forget most nights.