When I tested positive in 2005, exactly two weeks after my twenty-first birthday, I didn't quite know how to feel; angry, sad, crazy, most of all I was just terrified. I had seen two people, close to my family, lose their lives to the complications that come with having an virus that renders my immune system insufficient. Although that seems to be my biggest problem, it wasn't. My life was beginning to change in a big way, and I didn't even know it.
If you read in other post you will read how negatively my family reacted when they were told, and how that was such a horrible day. Already, I had a negative view of myself, and who I was, and why I felt as if I deserved contracting HIV. Hell, I even had someone from my church tell me that GOD was punishing me for my "disobedience." I hated myself, and I believe everyone else around me hated me too. I lost "friends," My church family ostracized me, my real family blamed me. Although, there were many people around me, I was yet still alone. My boyfriend at the time broke up with me, we lost the house we were living in. I could have killed myself, hell, I even tried. I just never took enough pills.
I was so focused on salvaging, and saving relationships, that I didn't even stop to think of myself. I wanted to win the love of my life back, and I was willing to do anything. After he told me that we couldn't be, and I realized that I didn't deserve his love anymore, I began to fell so alone, unhappy, and depressed. I swallowed a handful of anti psychotics and fell asleep in the car. When we got to my house, i attempted to get out of the car, and fell to the ground smacking my head on the pavement. I was willing to die to have the love back in my life. Not just His Love, but every one's love. Everyone was treating me so differently, so ill-mannered.
I went to a cookout at my old pastor's house, and when my plate was fixed, they went on a hunt to find plastic silverware for me to eat from. How fucking ignorant of them, how unholy. I completely lost my appetite, and asked my sister to take me home. I stayed away from there since, I stopped going to church as well, I didn't see the love there. No one ever had anything nice to me, and if they did they had to be classified as sinners. The holier-than-though folk began to treat me as the virus they always thought I was. I felt I had no one, and no one understood. That justified my desire to die, to leave this earth, to leave behind the people I love.
As I lay there on the ground slipping in and out of conciousness. I heard screams, met rude paramedics, and waited to not wake up again. I survived that night. It was a whole year before I enrolled into HIV Care, my white bllod cells (CD4 Count) were down to 228 and dropping, My Viral Load (HIV Virus count) was in the Hundreds of thousands and rising. I was soon to die if I didn't accept the fact that I was now HIV postive and needed to take care of mySelf. No one was showing me the way, I had no health insurance, and no gudance. No one stopped me and said, "Hey, Brother, cousin, friend, do you need any help going to the doctor?" I was completly alone. That use to get me down at first, but then I realized poeple are selfish, and ignorant so I became compassionate, and started being very selfish, and I did only things that concerned mySelf, and not any other. Sounds terrible, but distancing myself, thoughts, and feelings away from other people has helped me survive.
That was Ten years ago. I am still alive, not because I had a support system who went to group sessions with me, not because I had a support system going to the doctor with me, I survived because I knew That I didn't need anyone to do it. All I needed was me and my mind. Yeah, It got lonely at times, but I'd rather live alove, then die surounded by a bunch of people and still feel alone. I survived this far because of Me and My Faith. I survived because of the way that I choose to live, -Free. I survived because I wanted to show other living in my situation how to survive as well. It isn't the end, it is, instead a beautiful beginning.
No comments:
Post a Comment