I shouldnt be posting again: you've heard enough of me already, but about this word 'normal'.
you said: "but it's overwhelming, and far from normal"
but where does your idea of normality actually come from? When you get a group of people in a room, which are the ones who are normal? how do they express their normality? People have an idea about what they can talk about and what they cannot which is set, not by them, but by a kind of social set-up which can be unbelievably limiting especially amongst young people - all thrashing out in their own minds who they are and what they are about and what they can do and what they cannot. It's a frightening place to be and in some countries - where the macho thing is intense - this can seem so limiting that it becomes an overwhelming burden on people who are no less normal than anyone else but just more sensitive and, for all sorts of reasons, much more needy. Throw into that mix a sexuality which just doesnt fit, deep attachments that cannot work, intense feelings that cannot be talked out and you have enormous suffering. I know this because I've been there and I suspect so have a lot of people on this board and I know it's where you are right now. So from that point of view you've come to the right place.
I won't say anymore. I belong to a different culture and that makes it hard for me to say the things that you need to hear - its one of the drawbacks of the www I suppose. I'm not sure that Eldad has hit it right either because he is talking about your pastor but somehow I doubt you are presently a churchgoer are you? I know that the last person I could have talked to back when I was young was my local pastor. I did eventually find someone though and he pretty well saved my life, and changed my life for ever come to think of it.
A therapist might help, but, like Eldad, I am unsure about this. Your post sounds much more together though, perhaps because it isnt trying to be?? (not sure.) We're all rooting for you youth we really are.