Confessions

It has been about six and half months since my diagnosis, and I can say that I have been through some of the biggest ups and downs that I could have never expected. My life is slowly returning to normal and I am able to look back now on everything I went through those first few painful months. It’s as if I’m peering through a window at the last 6 months, and for the first time I can see everything, clear as day. I’ve come to many realizations about the time period now and who I was and who I have become.

One of the things that is most visible to me now is all the false emotions. I went into this mode right after my diagnosis where if I could do as much volunteer work as possible, learn as much as I possibly I could about the virus, share my story to as many people as humanly possible, etc. that it would validate my being infected. There’s a fine line between strength and reality, and balancing the two factors can be so difficult in times of such distress. I feel that those first few months I overloaded myself with too many emotions. I played the victim to those around me, had a need for affection because of my diagnosis. I’ve come to realize that I used sex for a long time as a coping mechanism, one in order to find security, confidence, and acceptance. When that plan backfired on me, I no longer knew how to cope. When the one thing I had relied on for so long to get me through the rough years of self-acceptance ended up being the one thing that gave me this virus, I became tactless. I transformed my need for acceptance that I had gotten by having sex, into what sex had caused: the virus to be inhabiting my body.

I’m not downplaying the validity of my blog, some of the volunteer work I did, and the speaking I’ve done. That has all been me, real and raw. It has come from the heart, and continues to come from the heart. What I am owning up to is how I think I may have manipulated my situation because I had so many other issues that I hadn’t yet resolved; getting my diagnosis unveiled a lot of those issues. Drinking was one of them. For those of you that know me, you know I’m definitely the partying type. I can definitely say at the time I was infected (almost 3 years ago now) my drinking was out of control. I was partying hard, was about to get a DUI, and making some poor decisions. Between the time I was infected and the time I received my diagnosis my drinking wavered between excessive and sometimes non-existent. To me though, I didn’t have a problem. I didn’t drink during the day, I always showed up for work, even if I was hungover, etc. Since my diagnosis though, I have become more aware of the people around me. It’s when I saw my drinking hurt people I care about and love (my mom, my ex-boyfriend, some really good friends who no longer talk to me) that I became concerned. And it took a several months for me to admit this, but I do realize that I have problems with drinking. It’s something I’ve been addressing, but I know this. I don’t want to ever hurt someone who really cares about me again because of some immature decision (like excessive drinking). If you have been hurt by it, I apologize. I mean that with all my heart.

Another issue that I feel I have had to confront is my ability to relate to other people in a realistic way. I didn’t realize it for a long time, but I see now that I can be self-centered. That’s a trait that I am trying very hard to work off, and I would consider my actions against it pretty good. It’s funny to a degree, because I never saw it before, but now it is so clear. I had a tendency not to use people for their things, or money, etc., but for their attention. In return, I gave little concern to what they may have been going through in their life. I told myself I was such a great friend, but in reality I wasn’t the friend I thought I was. That’s something else about me that I have been really working to change, and whether or not I can ever re-establish some of these friendships again, I will work to build new ones. And more real ones.

I’m not using this blog entry to bash myself. I’m just owning up to some of the things I’ve done wrong. To sum up this entire entry in one sentence, its to show how getting a life altering diagnosis, such as HIV, can bring so many other things to the table that one refuses to acknowledge. I had a choice: I could go on being a semi-decent person, a bad friend, and struggle with HIV, or I could change my lifestyle, who I am as a person, and live with HIV with much more support. And that’s what I am doing. It will take a long time to be the person I ultimately want to be, to right a lot of the wrongs, but I have a lot of leeway in the process now that I can recognize what I did and how I was, and really be so much better of a person.