Taken from my personal blog.
Dating has been a touchy subject for me ever I tested HIV+ half a year ago.
It was difficult enough meeting people before my diagnosis, and after I found out, I thought it would be next to impossible to find someone who would give me any attention. A lot of this stems from my own ambivalence towards people who were HIV-positive. Despite living in an urban environment and interning with a wellness clinic, I haven’t met anyone who was open about their HIV serostatus — that is, until a year ago. Would I have dated someone who was positive? Perhaps. Would I have contemplated entering into a serious relationship with said person? I am not quite so sure. I never really did pay serious attention to whether or not I would date someone who was positive, simply out of the fact that I didn’t know anyone who was. But now, at this point in my life, I have engaged in on and off introspection and came to a guilty conclusion that I would not engage in anything serious with a person who was poz.
But all of that has changed.
So I met this one boy — who shall remain unnamed — spring of 2007. I disclosed my status to him early fall of last year and he took it in good stride. He didn’t seem to treat my any differently and, in fact, I dare say it brought us closer together. But that doesn’t mean that all of my anxieties and doubt were washed away. On the contrary, meeting someone who accepted my serostatus made me acutely aware that dating would be forever different. Coming out of the closet is one thing, but disclosing your HIV status is a different beast altogether. Media and society is slowly warming up to homosexuality but HIV, on the other hand, is still taboo and is not widely discussed within the gay community, much less within communities of color. I feel normal when I am around him. We joke around, study and go out together. We watch movies and take naps. But there are still times that I am reminded that I am different, that I have this demon within me waiting and lurking. I was initially scared to become intimate with him, fearing some sort of rejection or judgment. I assumed that he wouldn’t want to do anything risky, given our different serostatuses.
So I tried keeping him at a distance, maintaining an emotional disconnect, just waiting for the inevitable moment that he would just move on. It is hard enough to believe that someone would be interested in me, but I was imagining that being HIV-positive would make it all the more difficult. So I kept up the charade for as long as I could. I wouldn’t call nor text him back. I wouldn’t respond to his messages nor emails. I feigned indifference. But he unexpectedly called me out on it. He asked my why I was actively pushing him away. I just told him I found it difficult to believe anyone would have a serious interest in me. I told my therapist and close friends of how I was feeling and what I should do. They all gave me the same advice. If he weren’t serious about his feelings, would he have been so persistent in trying to talk to me? That put a lot of things into perspective.
Soon after I tested poz, I tried going online to find other people for support. I started off with the usual sites such as poz.com or aidsmeds.com, but as the search went on, I become increasingly disillusioned. The majority of people I found were overwhelmingly white and much older than I am. I suppose I was naively idealistic in that I assumed I would have found someone like me right off the bat. Much like within any community, there needs to be more than a tenuous self-identification such as being gay and in this case, being HIV-positive. I could surely talk about my experiences on testing positive — and I did — but if I am to truly discern this monumental change, I have to do it under other axes. My experiences are focused around being a person of color, first and foremost. My struggle with depression, the loss of my father and being the first one in my family to go to college are also other factors.
There must be other young adults around my age that have tested HIV-positive, seeing that over half of new infections are under the age of 25. Perhaps, I thought, maybe they are in the same position I am, afraid to disclose their status out of fear of rejection and discrimination. But this also raises a scary scenario, what if these individuals are unaware of their status? I have heard statistics and anecdotal evidence that young adults don’t get tested as often as they should be. I have a few friends in the Los Angeles are who admitted that they haven’t gotten tested in months, if not years. I asked them why and they said that they didn’t know anyone who was poz and they assumed that they were safe. Popular conceptions paint HIV as a gay white male disease, or something that only afflicts I.V. drug users. But HIV does not discriminate, it crosses all social lines and divisions — I know first hand.
I suppose I lucked out, seeing that the boy was progressive and that we shared many interests. I was slowly overcoming my overwhelming insecurities and tried to put myself out there. But old habits die hard. I keep oscillating between trust and distrust. I want to open up to him but I want to protect myself at the same time. How can anyone love me if I don’t love myself? I feel I am now at a crossroads. He will be coming back from his trip the day before school starts and I am already planning on just ignoring him. I just hate the sway he has over me. I hate how I find myself thinking about him. I hate how I am reminded of him just walking through campus. I sometimes wish I had never met him, so to save myself from all this doubt. It is pretty pathetic.
But I think to myself: Is all this really worth it? Can I still push people away forever? My therapist outright tells me to grow up and accept responsibility. I need to take responsibility for my actions. I need to control my emotions and my perspectives on the world. I need to remain rational and logical.
My confidantes are right. Would he continue to put all this effort into hanging out with me if he weren’t serious? Would he have asked to see me the night before he flew out? I cannot play these cat and mouse games. I cannot continue to test my friends, family and loved ones. Testing HIV-positive reminds me of my mortality — there isn’t a second to waste. I need to start putting more effort into this. If it works, it works; if it doesn’t, I will eventually move on. If only I would just let myself live.
WHAT TO DO NOW?