20th anniversary with HIV

[Guest guest]



Well, today marks a milestone of sorts for me. It just hit me that it was 20 years ago that I was told that i had tested positive for HIV...and at the time I knew that given how long it had been since I had had "unsafe sex", it had been at least 4 years since i had been infected - so we are now looking at about 25 years (ie: my whole adult life!).

It's been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster over the years - but one thing I always tell people is that right from the first day, I shed a few tears for about 5 minutes and then went back to work and refused to listen to all the pessimistic, negative attitudes that were so pervasive in those years. I decided from the start that until there was conclusive proof that every single person with HIV was 100% certain to get sick and die - I was going to operate on the assumption that I would have a normal lifespan.

I think that decision saved my life. I tried going to some support groups - but found they were dominate by a lot of miserable people who just wanted to talk about writing wills and going on longterm disability etc... and I found that each time I went, I arrived in a good mood and left feeling depressed! - so I turned away from all that stuff.

So life went on. I rose up the corporate ladder, got a graduate degree, bought a house etc...I never had any symptoms of HIV disease - it was always just a laboratory result. I went on and off meds starting in '97 and had some mild side-effects and now have none and am undetectable. Hopefully the next 44 years of my life will go as well as the last 44.

One thing about HIV is that it makes you regard each day as a bit more of a gift than if it had never happened in the first place.

It has never had much impact on me physically, the main impact of having HIV is on the more emotional side. With HIV almost no one credible (I don't count IV drug users, people who have spent most of their lives in the prison system or people you have never met who send you e-mails from Nigeria or Ukraine wanting to be mail order husbands) is willing to date you - no matter how much you have to offer as a person, no matter how good you might look, no matter how good a heart you have - to about 99.9% of gay men, you are nothing but a giant walking "+" sign. I know its probably less of a problem in some big American cities where HIV is more ubiquitous and where the population with HIV is more diverse. But where I live, once you take away people who just got out of jail, people who are homeless and people who are crystal meth addicts - you are left with very, very slim pickings....and then you also have the problem that people who are HIV- assume that if you are POZ, you must be someone who just got out of jail, is homeless and/or jobless or a self-destructive crystal meth addict etc...as if no one can have HIV AND be a responsible, attractive, gainfully employed person.

Anyways, i don't know where i'm going with all of this, but on my 20th anniversary - I just wanted to write what was on my mind.

in Toronto