HIV

i seem to dangle between a few select emotions. grief, numbness and anger.

they don’t come periodically or in a set sequence.. they just happen. uninvited. they don’t even have the decency to stay for a familiar amount of time, and just when you get accustomed to them they disappear. it’s like being on a bloody merry-go round. except you experience the emotion most people would experience in the space of a month in a few set hours.

this is supposedly a defense mechanism employed by the psyche. when you ego/id whatever it is, is not mature enough to handle trauma, it suppresses it to defend your fragile mind. this is what i learnt in AS psychology. it’s funny everything that i am learning for my exams this summer is happening to me or is in someway relevant.

defense mechanisms or not, i don’t feel protected i just get migraines and back pain and more recently foot cramps. although i don’t know if this is due to stress or my questionable diet. but now i don’t even feel like eating because i feel like shit.

the main point is that it’s not fair. well i know it’s not fair but that doesn’t stop what’s happening from happening. i think i’m going through the ‘why me?’ stage. but then i think why should it have happened to anyone? then i go back to self-pity and bargaining- well maybe if i pretend this didn’t happen then i can pretend my childhood was normal and that i had a normal family life and a normal experience in education and normal experiences in relationships.

sometimes i think that what’s going on isn’t real, as if someone’s tricked me and that it’s happening to someone else. but you can’t run. it always catches up with you. you can’t suppress it forever because one day you’ll snap or something will trigger the memory and when that memory is triggered you either figure some way out to cope with it and survive or you bury it under again.

when i made decision to go for testing, due to fear of somehow maybe contracting HIV and it being dormant for 10 years and to take the decision to begin rape counseling, i had a nice little plan in my head.

on one hand i could be HIV positive and never have a sexual relationship and commit suicide/run away as i knew there was no way in hell my mum would have supported me.

on the other hand

i could be HIV negative and somehow all my problems would be solved and my worries would end

thankfully i was STD free – I’m not saying there is anything wrong with you if you do have an STD/STI whatever- but HIV was my biggest fear as it would have been the ultimate scar. contracting a life changing disease through no fault of my own at such a young age.

i remember going to do the test. ironically it was world AIDS day. i told the nurse my fears and about the rape and she seem relatively unconcerned. I would have thought it would have been part of her medical ‘duty’ to refer me to a rape counselor but nothing was said about that.

even after hearing my results as ‘negative’ over the phone , i still couldn’t relax. i was still anxious. my overwhelming anxiety over HIV had to be replaced with something else, and in this case it was my fwb relationship (friends with benefits). it was like i was replacing anxiety with anxiety in an effort to block out dealing with remembering being raped. so i could treat it as if it was a normal part of my childhood and move on and being normal. and have casual sex. and not give a shit.

the funny thing about people who act like they’re tough all the time is that generally deep down they’re scared and weak. It doesn’t matter how carefully you hide a corpse, the stench will come out one day.