Posted By HOLAA
On Jul 1, 2013
By Lihle
Choosing to live has been a really challenging choice for me and living has been really fruitful to say the least.
Growing up has its own challenges especially if you are the breadwinner at home so I decided that since my mother passed away and my father is not working, if something happened to me my brothers and my son would suffer, so I applied for a life insurance policy. That was my gift to them not knowing that I would be receiving a gift myself.
They explained the process and the things I needed to do, that included the tests I needed to take in order for me to qualify. I took all the tests they showed that I’m healthy however there was one test I had to do before the application was approved, I had to take the HIV test. People usually get scared when they have to test I was so sure that this too will come out negative so you can imagine my surprise when I was told otherwise.
Let me take you through my day.
I had tested the day before so I was going to just go take my results and go to court well that was my plan anyway, however when I got to the office the doctor asked me to sit down I could see it in her face that she was the carrier of bad news, she kept asking questions like “if you are HIV positive how would you take it?” or “who would you tell, is there a person you can talk to?.” For me that was a stupid question because I had been given bad news almost all my life, so I already knew the results. This was just another one of those times so I asked her nicely to stop asking me ridiculous questions and just give me the test results.
When she said that she is sorry but I was indeed HIV positive, it sounded different from what I thought it would sound like. I was not prepared for her to say it, even though I had already known what the results were.
She ripped my heart into pieces, my world fell apart, I wanted to drain all the blood from my body.
By the time I got home it was already late morning.
No tears.
I began to think who could have infected me, the blame game had begun in my head.
The problem was, I didn’t know who to blame, from the people I was in an accident with, to people I had slept with. I wanted someone to account for this unfortunate incident.
I thought until my head started spinning, even though I wanted to cry as the pain was too much, there were tears.
I decided to buy a bottle of vodka. By the time I had drank half the tears and sobs came and I cried until I fell asleep.When I woke up my friends were there, preparing food for me. No one judged me or my behavior, they were there because they cared and because of that I made a choice to live with the virus and that’s all it was.
A virus that is in my blood.
Nothing.
It does not define who I am nor who I sleep with. To all the lesbians out there who are living with the virus and feel there is no one to talk because you are scared how your fellow lesbians will take your HIV status, you are not alone but the key is to live a positive lifestyle.
To all the lesbians please stop judging us, we are living with the virus, like all the people who have been diagnosed with any kind of a disease all we need is love and support and if you have nothing positive to say then shut the hell up I’m tired of hearing comments like “ lesbians don’t get infected” or “if she is positive that means she sleeps with men too” each and every person has a responsibility to educate one’s self.
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