Boys of Suimmer...

Since I was 15 I have always considered the Friday before Memorial Day to be the start of the "Gay Summer Season". This holy Friday, in which I look forward to every year, is always "Gay Day" at Great America. It's a special event that Great America theme park holds every year. It's from 5 PM and goes on until the wee hours of 2 AM. Thousands of homos indulge themselves in a fun filled evening of roller coasters, drinks, and dancing. It has always started out my summer because it's the first major gay-friendly event of the summer. Then comes my birthday in June, followed by Pride in San Francisco just a few weeks later. I usually consider the close out of the "Gay Summer Season" to be the Love Festival in San Francisco.

I know this seems like an awkward topic to bring up in my blog, but you have to understand the importance of this day for me. It is like Christmas for an 8 year old. Every year that I have gone, which is every year since 2003, I have tried to make it as special as I can. From the first time I went with my much loved, ultra gay friend Joshie, thru my senior year with Kimber and Oscar, and Desirae and the everybody, until last year with Daniel (who knew it was going to be our last time, that was also the same day we found out we got the apartment in Long Beach); every year has held a special part in my homolicious little heart. Most importantly though, I've always noted how I've grown bit by bit each year. I still remember sitting in my high school Biology class, sophomore year, waiting to get out of 6th period so I could embark on my first trip to Gay Day. I look back and laugh, missing the naive 15 year old that I was. Not knowing where my life was going to go, but thinking I knew everything. Being so secure in who I was, yet so insecure in what I was to become. And now I think about it more and more.

The past 106 days (since my diagnosis) I have changed so much. Some days I have grown, some days I have fallen apart. Some days I have learned, and some days have left me longing for more answers. More and more, I feel rattled by the thought of what I could be, instead of what I am. I feel guilty because I was in a good spot pre-diagnosis. Between school, work, and life, things weren't half bad. Granted it had been hard being away from my family and Nor Cal friends, life was working out. It seems like I think of time in a measurement of B.H. and A.H. (Before HIV, After HIV). Before I knew I was positive, I had this sense of innocence, this sense of freedom. Now I feel like those things have been placed in a time capsule. I can dig it up and look at it, hold it, as if it were some sort of emotional relic, yet never experience it fully again. I've been feeling the ball and chain of the virus tied around my tan little ankle. Life was a playground before. I could have all the fun I wanted with no sense of consequence. Yet I fell off life's monkey bars and landed in the thorny stems of reality. Cause and effect is real, action and reaction a truth.

I'm no longer the 15 year old with frosted tips, riding carefree on roller coasters every Friday before Memorial Day. I'm not longer the know it all 20 year old, carefully sneaking vodka into a theme park on that Friday in May. Now I'm an infected 21 year old, with a new sense of raw reality of life's offerings. I know now what humans are capable of doing to each other, knowingly and unknowingly. Guardian angels don't bubble wrap your fall. Your beloved mother can't always fix your owwies with a simple band aid, not anymore. So when the "gay summer" starts tomorrow, where will I be when it ends. Most importantly, how will I feel?

Rock Bottom

I'm quitting drinking. I mean it. No more alcohol, it is toxic to me. Last night I was out having drinks (5 Tanquery Martinis and a Blojob shot) to be exact. When I got home, for some reason in my drunken state, I became extremely upset and depressed. I did the dumbest thing imaginable: I swallowed all my Paxil, Klonopin, and Trazadone. Great mix, right? A anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, and sleeping pill massive cocktail.

Suicide attempt? No. Cry for help? Most definitely. Right after I did it I went and told my sister, then things just flashed by. Police came, paramedics came, and I was whisked away in an ambulance. I spent the entire night in the hospital, had my stomach pumped, had a cathater (fucking OUCH), and the whole nine yards. Oh, and when they drew my blood, my blood alcohol level was .257, and that was more than an hour after I had stopped drinking. Why I'm still alive, I don't know. But I am blessed. What I did was extremely selfish, stupid, and inconsiderate. Enough of the gory details though, I really want to focus on how I felt, and how I feel now.

Trapped. That's exactly how I felt when I came to (yet still heavily intoxicated) at the hospital. I had to be held down in restraints. Somewhere in my delusions, I thought that I had been kidnapped. I dont' remember everything I did or said, but I remember exactly how I felt. I felt the most intense fear I have ever felt, I can still feel yet. I felt more helpless than ever. I didn't consciously realize where I was, and there was a security guard watching over me, so I thought I was being held captive. I ask myself now, are those feelings related to my HIV status? I feel captured right now. I feel helpless. It feels like it will never go away. Anyone who knows me well, knows I can be kind of a control freak. I very much things my way, but I try to compromise. It's because I like to handle things, I like to handle situations. And I can't handle this. I can't reach into my veins and pull this horrible virus out of me. I try, so hard I try. Just knowing that there's something inside of me that is multiplying and multiplying and multiplying. I can't control it. Yeah I can got in meds when I need to, and live a healthier lifestyle, etc. etc. etc. But, I can never just remove it from me. I feel I'm wearing the scarlet letter, forever embedded in my blood and mind.

I just feel so confused. I feel like I do all these great things to get me ahead, yet I find someway to regress. It's like a nonstop, rapid paced game of Chutes and Latters, and unfortunately my gameboard has longer chutes than it does latters. Does anybody know a carpenter? :) Really though, I just need to figure out how to keep myself on top of this game. Fulltime. Not half time like I have been doing. I mean I've been doing all these crucial, amazing things. Speaking to people, allowing others into my life for the sake of themselves to learn and protect themselves, have completely changed my eating habits, everything. But the other half the time I'm drinking myself to oblivian, or beating myself up, or crying, or blaming, or having the pity-party of the year. It needs to stop. I keep telling myself it, but never doing it. So like I said earlier, I'm making a very bold change that many of you know will be hard for me, I'm completely quitting drinking. My mom, stepdad, and I all decided that some sort of outpatient treatment for alcoholism. I don't know if I'm a typical alcoholic, but I know that I have drinking problems. I know I need to stop. Maybe not forever, but definitely until my life is back to normal, and I can learn to stop at 2 or 3 drinks, instead of 7 or 8. I can't have another night like last night happening again, ever.

And I just broke up with my boyfriend. Seriously, as I was writing this blog, I found some shit out, and broke up with him. So I need to end it here. I'm in too much pain to talk about it tomorrow. I will try my hardest to update tomorrow, I'm just drowning in tears right now.