Category: ultrapositive

You’re Allowed to Ask

For the first time in a while, the subject came up a couple of times this week once while discussing a project, again while chatting with friends during a much-needed caffeine break. I realized how much it’s become my open secret, the thing everyone knows but still never mentions, except with extremely obvious and awkward oversensitivity.

I, of course, still think about it all the time. I think about it every time I take medicine, when I wonder how I’ll feel when and if that one, easy-on-the-system pill isn’t enough to keep things under control. (I don’t try to hide the medicine when I take it anymore. Have you noticed?) I think about it every time there’s a drop of blood from a bad hangnail or a schaving scrape. (I usually wonder how I’d react if I ever had a more serious scrape that I couldn’t tend to all by myself, where someone else might want to help stop the bleeding or clean the wound.) I think about it when I remember what it was like to have sex, back before the antidepressants and the guilt and the fear and the mixed feelings. (I know I shouldn’t judge, but I do, and no one was more reluctant to admit it than me, especially when I realized I was my own jury.)

I don’t mind talking about it, you know. Seriously, it’s alright to be curious, to wonder how things are going. The answer might just be, “Fine. A little depressing from time to time, but still fine overall. The numbers are all holding steady, just like I hoped for.” Sometimes, I may not want to get into it then and there, but what topic (except the weather, maybe) isn’t like that now and then? It seems weird that it never comes up, since it was once such a big deal when we had to talk about it.

I don’t know if I expect a certain reaction or not. I don’t think I do, but the topic seems conspicuous by its absence. Maybe I just want to be a little less stoic I don’t want to fall back into those old habits of acting like I can handle it all by myself and smile all the way. That didn’t work out so well, after all.

And don’t rush in and act all concerned all at once, because then I’ll feel totally self-conscious. That would be awkward

I know, it’s a little unclear what the best approach would be. Sorry about that, but I don’t know what to advise, or if I’m even trying to give advice or just…you know, get it off my chest. That’s life, I guess fuzzy, unclear, something you figure out as you go along.

#928

This is my 928th blog entry (more or less there have been a number of guest writers, and I’ve deleted a few irrelevant technical announcements from former sites), having now combined into this one place all the posts ever made from all the blogs I’ve maintained for the last three-and-a-half years.

Phew!

I had to do a quite a bit of manual editing of all the stuff I wrote before I used Greymatter, which turned out to be more of a stroll down Memory Lane than a hassle. It was amazing to see how much has changed in my life over all that time. I started proper blogging a while after the dissolution of my last serious relationship and starting over again in my own place in East Williamsburg a time when I was still depressed, angry, tense, and eager to focus on something other than the difficulty of the previous few months. I wanted to sharpen my writing skills and put something in place that would make it easier for me to add new content to the website I’d been maintaining for a while. I wanted to tinker with some new tools that had just come out.

Since then, my weblogs have collected the records of my adventures, successes, my goofs, my failures, my insights, my cluelessness, and my changing attitudes. Crushes and boyfriends and friends have come and gone, some quite publicly and some with only the most obscure references. I’ve moved a few times, started and quit jobs a few times, gotten depressed and crawled back out of it, and grappled with the same damn insecurities over and over and over again. There have been a number of earth-shattering changes, too.

For all that’s happened and all that I’ve changed, I don’t really think that I’ve grappled with any more or less than anyone else. Whose life doesn’t go topsy-turvy once or twice between the ages of 28 and 32? Or during any other four-yean span, for that matter? It’s just weird to go and sift through all of that, and think about how publicly it all transpired (and also ponder the various gaps in the story, events and people I chose never to expose for one reason or another).

I’ve been thinking about how much energy has gone into all this writing over the years, and it made me stop kicking myself quite so hard for feeling like I never accomplish that much. Granted, it might have been nicer if I’d been paying attention to the effort that was underway so that I could have focused it and written an actual book or something, but I guess all the material is still here in case anyone makes me an offer.

All that stuff was also a good reminder about how my energy and my ability to articulate things ebbs and flows. Lately I’ve felt like I’ve barely been able to string two coherent words together. I’ve been almost completely incapable writing decent, thoughtful posts or e-mails, which has led to an enormous pile-up of overdue letters to people who’ve probably been offended by my silence. (It’s not for any lack of care, I swear, and I’m trying to catch up, just so you know.) I’ll get back in the saddle agian at some point I always seem to eventually. Life is a journey, right?

And thanks to everyone who had read this site, written for this site, or left any of the 2200 or so comments that have been collected (there would be more, but the demise of BlogVoices taught me my lesson about third-party comment services). Y’all are a huge reason this has all been worthwhile, and will hopefully continue to be a big part of life for years to come.

The Basement Blog

So what did your site look like when you first started out?

Pincushion

I’m really squeamish about needles, and all the blood I’ve been giving the last few months has only made things worse, rather than more tolerable through repitition. I guess part of the problem is that every time I give blood for a test now, it’s a mortifying reminder of what’s going on with me. I’m giving a few ounces of blood every couple of months to see whether or not the virus in me is still being suppressed.

So I worry about my health a little more when I go to the lab, and I also feel self-conscious about the scrutiny of the women at the lab. I know they have to be cautious with everyone, but I can’t deny that I’m part of the reason they have to be.

Today, I went to give some blood for my HIV genotyping test, and the woman taking the samples was new at the job, or at least so nervous or unskilled it seemed that way. She had trouble finding a vein, and spent a little too much time trying to intercept it without withdrawing the needle. It hurt like hell, and left my arm sore for the rest of the afternoon. That just made me more anxious, and I was feeling a little woozy again, except this time it was from nerves instead of hunger, like last time.

Don’t Rock the Boat

Ah, so this is that queasiness I was warned about. It’s hitting me a couple of days later than I was led to believe, and I can’t quite say it’s a welcome relief. Riding a crowded subway car in the morning is bad enough without feeling like you’re going to either pass out or puke. I hope this evens out before too long.

Yay! More Blood Samples!

I’ve had it with giving blood samples. I’m squeamish about needles under the best of circumstances, although I smile bravely and don’t make a fuss when they’re rquired. It’s a bit harder now knowing that those samples really mean something. I had more blood drawn today, about two weeks after the last batch, so that my doctor can start to plot curves for my viral load and T-cell counts.

The thought that two weeks may show a change, for better or worse, is chilling. It doesn’t help much to think about how much worse I’ve felt lately, just from the constant stress of all this hulaballoo. I’m sure it’s not helping me much to be so wound up, so lethargic.

But I smile bravely and don’t make a fuss, even though I’d really like to.

Backdated

I’m writing this post on December 1, 2024: World AIDS Day, and about 25 years or so since contracting HIV. I don’t know exactly when that happened. My doctor informed me of the situation on March 12, 2001, a week after I went in for a routine physical made possible by having a full-time job with health insurance for the first time in a few years. The initial battery of tests suggest I had seroconverted perhaps a year or two before that.

I also don’t know how it happened, specifically. Inferring from the timeline, some contextual cues, and my own recollection of the times when I let my guard down, I can at least guess with some accuracy who the vector of transmission had been.

Continue reading “Backdated”

Insecure Freak

God, I can be such an insecure freak sometimes. This isn’t helped by my occasional inability to make sense of a situation when I like a guy. Usually, it’s no problem for me to figure out the who-likes-who dynamics of a situation, but with this one I’m just lost. It’s happened before: I know I have an interest in things working out, so I just can’t make heads or tails out of the situation if it doesn’t all happen easily. Good grief. Just when I was convinced that he was trying to butter me up for the brush off (the infamous “You’re the nicest guy ever” remark was my tip-off), he calls all happy to talk to me and asks me to dinner.

Now, the big question is: How much of this is a reflection of my own fears about the risks of sleeping with him some more? Is it pathetically passive-aggressive of me to assume he’s being a jerk so I don’t have to figure out how comfortable I can be dating someone who’s positive?

Speaking of which, it’s high time I get tested again. It’s been a long time since my last test, and I’ve been a bigger slut during that time than ever before. As fastidious as I am, I know I’ve slipped a couple of times out of those dozens and dozens. Between this one (who still hasn’t actually mentioned anything about it to me) and my sister’s bout with a brain tumor, you can imagine how thoughts of mortality are darting around in my head.

Soapbox

I’m not participating in A Day Without Weblogs. This is not because I don’t think AIDS awareness is important, or because I think it’s a hollow gesture to remove your weblog for a day. On the contrary, I think any effort to shock people out of any complacency is vitally important. I think, though, that I would rather participate in World AIDS Day by taking a moment in this forum to make a call for continued dialogue and continued openness about the issue.

People I love have been deeply affected by AIDS and HIV. It’s touched my family and my friends, and it’s been the cause of grief, anger, and fear. The fear is the worst part, I fear, in terms of how our society on the whole deals with the presence of AIDS in our lives. When people react, ond overreact with fear, it breeds a climate that punishes the sufferers rather than battles the disease itself. I don’t want to live in a world where peope are ostracized and feared because of a health condition, especially one which is preventable and containable. I don’t want to live in a world where compassion and understanding and lucidity are shoved aside by hysteria, suspicion, intolerance, and moral indignation. Screw that.

I have friends with HIV, and it doesn’t freak me out. I have a brother with HIV, and it doesn’t freak me out. I’ve even dated guys with HIV, also: sometimes I’ve known about it, and sometimes I haven’t at the time. Either way, I’ve discovered that it doesn’t freak me out as much as I once thought it would. I’m grateful to know so that I have a chance to be a voice of reason rather than fear. What I’ve discovered each time I’ve learned about it is that it doesn’t change who that person may be, or how I feel about that person. The presence of HIV in their lives and mine may sadden me or make me angry sometimes, but it’s not the carrier I mind, it’s the virus. And it’s the way people react to it.

Don’t fear HIV. Don’t fear AIDS. Learn about them. Be smart and compassionate and careful. Prevent the spread of the virus. Don’t make martyrs or victims or pariahs or villains out of the people who have it. It’s not a judgement, it’s a disease. People get it, and that’s a tragedy, but pretending the tragedy doesn’t exist in your world will never ensure that it won’t.