I have been invaded by a tribe of blood sucking bugs that leave bloody trails across my linen!!!! It would be funny if it were not for the small welts across my arms! I Have pretty much spent the grater part of today turning my room upside down, it smells like an over sanitized (if there is such a thin) hospital room.
The scene:
I rise from my bed careful not to get my feet tangled with the extension cord, walk towards the partially opened door out towards the bathroom where a can of Dybug sits behind half empty bottles of face creams and shampoo.
I note that time stretches and expands, crawls and creeps and howls at every chance it gets and little bugs will take any chance they get to invade and suck the very blood that some other bugs are busy populating. I smile at the irony of my situation and grab the can of Dybug. It’s supposed to be odorless, so manybe the rest of the people i live with will not be gagging from the bug poison. Okay, maybe i should get some sort of mask over my face, i have been known to be quick to retch and hurl It does not matter what i eat, it all comes out green and sticky and smelly like pond scum.
My sister walks by, eyes me standing with big yellow bug spray thinking about throwing up versus another night of fighting bloodsuckers. I think i can hold my breath for five minutes or so while i empty the can into the room. I’ll have to close the door and hope that whatever odor dissipates in a few minutes or so while i sit in the family room and watch television. Aim, fire, quick retreat.
Monday, January 12, 2009
The beginning of the end
“So you are HIV positive! You can live a long and normal life, it’s not a death sentence its a new beginning,...” etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseum. The next time someone says that i swear i’ll have to smack the words right off their faces. Where do they get this script, how do they know, how can they know my level of normalcy or even assume that i want to change my life or get some new purpose or, or, or – it’s like we have these armies of HIV cheerleaders who suddenly have these insights into life and its meaning.
I had not banked on finding myself in this state, place or point in my life. Before now, i must confess i had not thought of finding myself at any higher point or lower, i guess i had been coasting, waiting, living by default. I look back at my life and try to find when was it good and when did it stop being good... the whys are many and right now they dont matter as much. I’m trying to find me as i was but for the life of me, i cannot hold on to a single instance long enough to loop it into an event or a chapter . It seems insignificant.
I sometimes catch myself staring hard at empty space, as if something would unfold. It’s like living in suspended wakefulness; quite yet loud, dark and starkly bright with nothing much registering except that i’m still here. It’s been a month. Going through it was no mean feat, nothing more than waking up, going to work, eating, sleeping and having the HIV alarm come off every twelve hours. So i am HIV positive, i still dont know what to make of it or of myself now that i know. It’s like waking up and someone tells you, you have something in you that now makes you an alien --- literary.
I’m not afraid of dying, why then should i be afraid of having this! Judgement. I could beat myself up about having been stupid enough to trust someone and not use a condom! I cannot judge, i dont have a yardstick to compare my life before this with anybody elses. I can still count the sexual partners i’ve had in my one hand and yes, even that one i’de decided had been worthy to remove all vestiges and physical barriers for. So, now that the odds of dying have been raised, do i pitch a tent at the cemetery, start with a bucket list, chase all that i can because time ticks louder and the absurdity of living an existential life seems so tragically pointless?
I’ve seen HIV been romanticised, given a face an identity, a life, achieving celebrity status and life long interement in the Halls of fame. This lends mixed and confusing messages to the rest of those standing outside and looking in. I dont know what any of them are trying to say to me now.
The devides that used to exist have shifted and been redefined; we have racial, ethnic, religious, gender, class and then people living with HIV (as if HIV now defines who you are in addition to being a black, african, catholic, middle class, single woman). How people seem to want to be recruited either in the fringes of activism, or whatever platform it presents is baffling to me. Who out there is wearing their leukemia on a sleeve, or their Lupus emblazoned on their shirts or encouraging people to have mamograms in state sponsored songfests or making cartoon characters about abnormal cells sneakily mutating in bodies their way like a plague of midget one eyed rats.
I watched world aids day come and go and people doing their ‘bit’ or the infected wearing it like return soldiers armed with stories and red-ribbons on lapels to Musicians taking to the stage in gleeful song and dance (in support of unknown causes) to being bombarded with adverts on Television that even a month ago before i knew my status i could not relate to and cannot relate to even now that i do know my status...
Am i supposed to be angry, afraid, worried, confused or depressed?... Every frigging moment of the day! I cannot take anything away from those who would boldly stand on a stages and proclaim, it almost feels like saying i have a demon in me, something so unholy i should be banished to another planet where me and my kind cannot be a threat. Judgement. I cannot wear this as a cloak or use it as a crutch or strum some new music to deliver a burning message. I have no message, i have nothing to share, about living with HIV only about living. For now, i would like to just silently own it. I am not it and therefore chose not to live in its shadow or on its terms or walk whatever path its seems to want to carve for me... It does not define me, has not become me (not yet anyway). Life and death are just that, nothing more nothing less, no more or less as inevitable as night following day, i find validation of my worth in being the constant in this equation.
This is big and intensely lonely to deal with. I find myself questioning who i am and who i’ve been and i’m drawing blanks. Mine has been a made up life, ironically i now reallise i have to consciously keep on making it up at every turn. I cannot knowingly going on as i have. I am terrified of the unknown, those things that i have no control over, cannot plan for, pre-empt, even fantasise about because i have no point of reference. It is indeed as if this new beginning threatens to scare, bewilder me with vague phantoms and eventually draw me out for a showdown.
I had not banked on finding myself in this state, place or point in my life. Before now, i must confess i had not thought of finding myself at any higher point or lower, i guess i had been coasting, waiting, living by default. I look back at my life and try to find when was it good and when did it stop being good... the whys are many and right now they dont matter as much. I’m trying to find me as i was but for the life of me, i cannot hold on to a single instance long enough to loop it into an event or a chapter . It seems insignificant.
I sometimes catch myself staring hard at empty space, as if something would unfold. It’s like living in suspended wakefulness; quite yet loud, dark and starkly bright with nothing much registering except that i’m still here. It’s been a month. Going through it was no mean feat, nothing more than waking up, going to work, eating, sleeping and having the HIV alarm come off every twelve hours. So i am HIV positive, i still dont know what to make of it or of myself now that i know. It’s like waking up and someone tells you, you have something in you that now makes you an alien --- literary.
I’m not afraid of dying, why then should i be afraid of having this! Judgement. I could beat myself up about having been stupid enough to trust someone and not use a condom! I cannot judge, i dont have a yardstick to compare my life before this with anybody elses. I can still count the sexual partners i’ve had in my one hand and yes, even that one i’de decided had been worthy to remove all vestiges and physical barriers for. So, now that the odds of dying have been raised, do i pitch a tent at the cemetery, start with a bucket list, chase all that i can because time ticks louder and the absurdity of living an existential life seems so tragically pointless?
I’ve seen HIV been romanticised, given a face an identity, a life, achieving celebrity status and life long interement in the Halls of fame. This lends mixed and confusing messages to the rest of those standing outside and looking in. I dont know what any of them are trying to say to me now.
The devides that used to exist have shifted and been redefined; we have racial, ethnic, religious, gender, class and then people living with HIV (as if HIV now defines who you are in addition to being a black, african, catholic, middle class, single woman). How people seem to want to be recruited either in the fringes of activism, or whatever platform it presents is baffling to me. Who out there is wearing their leukemia on a sleeve, or their Lupus emblazoned on their shirts or encouraging people to have mamograms in state sponsored songfests or making cartoon characters about abnormal cells sneakily mutating in bodies their way like a plague of midget one eyed rats.
I watched world aids day come and go and people doing their ‘bit’ or the infected wearing it like return soldiers armed with stories and red-ribbons on lapels to Musicians taking to the stage in gleeful song and dance (in support of unknown causes) to being bombarded with adverts on Television that even a month ago before i knew my status i could not relate to and cannot relate to even now that i do know my status...
Am i supposed to be angry, afraid, worried, confused or depressed?... Every frigging moment of the day! I cannot take anything away from those who would boldly stand on a stages and proclaim, it almost feels like saying i have a demon in me, something so unholy i should be banished to another planet where me and my kind cannot be a threat. Judgement. I cannot wear this as a cloak or use it as a crutch or strum some new music to deliver a burning message. I have no message, i have nothing to share, about living with HIV only about living. For now, i would like to just silently own it. I am not it and therefore chose not to live in its shadow or on its terms or walk whatever path its seems to want to carve for me... It does not define me, has not become me (not yet anyway). Life and death are just that, nothing more nothing less, no more or less as inevitable as night following day, i find validation of my worth in being the constant in this equation.
This is big and intensely lonely to deal with. I find myself questioning who i am and who i’ve been and i’m drawing blanks. Mine has been a made up life, ironically i now reallise i have to consciously keep on making it up at every turn. I cannot knowingly going on as i have. I am terrified of the unknown, those things that i have no control over, cannot plan for, pre-empt, even fantasise about because i have no point of reference. It is indeed as if this new beginning threatens to scare, bewilder me with vague phantoms and eventually draw me out for a showdown.
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