Had another good realisation yesterday while talking to a friend of mine. The people I'm closest to at the moment and to whom I feel the most affinity aren't HIV+ men. I'm spending wonderfully good quality time with friends from the last few years, rather than gravitating towards the seroconverted. That I'm not needing that sense of fraternity, that consipiracy of sinners can only be a good thing.
Although I keep this blog and I write elsewhere about HIV issues, I am relieved that I'm not feeling like the virus in me has turned me into some other species any more, that I'm an alien among men when I go outside, that I don't feel it is something for which I have to apologise. It's certainly a reckless injury from which I will forever carry a scar, but the face I see in the mirror naturally now includes that cicatrix, that keloid. It's something I have in my life, but it is not my life and I'm hoping never will be.
I realise, though, that when I want to, I still use HIV as a mask for other issues in my life. I come home exhausted and upset after a long day at work. It's not the AIDS, it's the workload. I get nervous and frightened about the effect my HIV status might have on a new potential romance. It's not the AIDS, it's the butterflies in your stomach. Silly boy, blaming the AIDS. Whatever next?
Time to try to stop using this as an excuse to avoid tacking more immediate issues. Blaming everything on the AIDS is like spending money to tackle climate change that's coming in a hundred years rather than looking after poor people today. You may well feel worthy for being green, but if you want a better world, get your hands dirty now and tackle the more immediate problems.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
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