Living with HIV

Not too very long ago in the distant past people who were infected with leprosy was sent away to live inside of caves so that others can be safe. Today the plague is HIV and the cave is the body of the infected person and it is the moral conscious of that individual to ensure that others be safe and not be infected with the plague that resides within them.

The difference between the ancient leper and the present HIV is that the condition of the former was evident to all whereas the current HIV is hidden from outside view yet both persons are the outcast of the earth and goes through life with a living future completely paralyzed. HIV hovers over the infected person in every aspect of life. One endeavors to be positive thinking but the scourge is ever present and clings to every thought of the mind even during sleep where restful dreams should reside.

The joy of life gasps for breath for the person who is infected with HIV and unlike other diseases this one is encrypted with shame because it is still associated as being a homosexual decease. A common cold becomes an illness of much concern because it may lead to pneumonia and once a person who is infected with HIV catches pneumonia even if they should recover they have now technically transitioned from having HIV to having AIDS. A secret is the way of life for the HIV infected for who will say that they have HIV as casually as one will say that they have some type of heart disease.

A great lost of personal freedom comes with being infected with HIV as a person must now take extra care not to contaminate loved ones or be exposed to conditions that a weaken immune system has no vitality to combat. The love life is all but defunct as pleasure and enjoyment gives way to precautions and any hopes of meeting that dream one becomes a sad dream of long ago that has lost all rays of practical hope. Lost is compounded by the barrel of the gun being pointed and pressed tightly against the temple of the HIV infected who knows that a single cough may be the sign that existence is over and not in robes of honor but in a messy heap of putrefaction and squalor.

Living with HIV is not only the aspect of living with an incurable disease but also with one that makes you a walking plague and even a joke. It is like the end of the world and like being placed into the grave while still alive. It is like having a smile that suddenly drops from the mouth when the awareness of bad blood enters the mind as it does constantly so that the infected one may never know any form of peace and contentment anymore. It is like observing the marching to and fro of sanitary life from the gates of Hades and pleading for a miraculous cure that in one sweeping stroke will cleanse your blood untainted.

Living with HIV is wearing more mental than physical chains and both squeezes and presses the spirit to death. The light of the spirit is blurred and dimmed and dreams become entangled with medication and hopelessness. Anger eats away at the soul just like HIV eats away at the immune system but one can be controlled and subdued while the other is a wildfire burning the life to ash and any hopes of true romance to senders. Acceptance of your condition is by far the hardest hurdle to overcome and once this is achieved then you are ready to toss your higher aspirations into the garbage bin and set your life's goals into not infecting anyone with your piercing poisonous inhumanity.

Living with HIV is living with regrets but not really knowing when, where of how you became contaminated only knowing that you let your guards down and carelessness has blown up the blood flowing through your veins and that you both physically and emotionally will never be the same. The dye is cast and the quality of life is over and this you know that you have done this to yourself and so the anger is deep-seated flowing with every pump of your poisonous heartbeat of blood flowing throughout your body with lingering death and not prolonged life.

The positive side is that some time ago the tears of self-pity had stopped flowing from your eyes and replaced by the darkness of the blind but this darkness is worst than that of the blind because the eyes are seeing and the heart is beaten and the mind is constantly replaying the corruption of the veins and the illusion of life has forever faded away into the twilight of an empty day. The positive side is that well, there is no positive side in being a walking corpse and nor is there any sadness in being an outcast from the nations but how wonderful it would be to have tainted blood flowing pure and clean.

Living with HIV is living life with two distinct vital signs one is that of the human drive for continuance and the other is sorrow and emptiness and this is not because of the disease itself as being incurable but because of its nature that makes you a contaminating agent where your touch has become soiled and your kiss maybe a present to another's mouth of arsenic and daily heartaches and we say at a meeting that we are steadfast upon learning to live life on life's terms but living life with HIV is a blast furnace to the self-esteem and a hole in the blood that one cannot climb out of and even so life as it is, life as such as it is, goes on even when the infected person feels that it should not do so.