Shame? No, I Don’t Think So

I must be PMS’ing this week. That or I’m still sick, cause this story brought me to tears. Being a cold hearted fag at times, not always an easy thing to do.

I’m hiv positive. i’m not a fucking hero. i’m just a guy who had unsafe sex and i’m paying for it the rest of my life. i was a stupid guy who contracted one of the worst diseases of modern time. yep that’s me. i’m stupid. just call me stupid, but don’t ever call me a hero. yes, i knew the risks. i grew up in the time of aids. i knew how devastating the disease had been to a generation before me. i heard the stories of the death count. i heard about the ways to prevent the disease. i knew condoms, condoms, condoms. i even spoke about hiv prevention in my high school. i was always telling my friends to use condoms. i was a living breathing public service announcement for hiv prevention. that was me. well actually that was just part of me. the other part was an insecure guy who just wanted to be loved.

i guess part of me trusted them. up until that point i’d never been a strong person. i’d pretty much let other people make decisions for me. so anyway, i would sleep with guys. i’d let them bareback me. i was young. i was invincible. i was the straight guy in his new sports car going 95 miles an hour down the highway. i was invincible…or so i thought.

First, let me clarify, I’m a big believer in personal responsibility. That’s not my beef today. And I’m not condoning risky behavior. My issue is a disturbing trend within our culture of treating anyone less perfect than ourselves as “less than human” and just writing them off. Well, life ain’t easy for all of us. For some of us it can be a unbearable unending hell at times. If it were so damn easy to make the right choices then we wouldn’t have tens of thousands of people dying every year from cigarette related cancer now would we? This is a serious problem people. And for the record, I’m not perfect and I’ve been guilty of this fallacy.

The snips above come from MeSouthern, who is an HIV + male. He converted at an early age. By his own admission, he knew of the risks, albeit indirectly, and made some bad decisions. So now should we write him off as undeserving of our sympathy? If you answer yes, then I hope you never know hard times because karma can be an ugly unrelenting teacher. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t we should glorify it either. Far too many guys these days, shake off the horrible aspects of being HIV+. Reality check, HIV is a terminal illness. That means there is NO cure for it. Granted we have some great drugs out there these days but not everyone responds so well and not all of these drugs are easy to take.

…the day my positive test results came back. that’s the day i knew it was time to take responsibility for my past mistakes. the past mistakes of being a stupid fucking whore, not a hero. here i sit now. my body is starting to fail me. it’s been about 4 years, since i got my test results back. i will soon be on meds, that will hopefully keep me alive. yes, i regret fucking every hot guy without a condom. yes, i regret using drugs. i should’ve known better; i did know better. aids isn’t pretty. it’s a very serious disease. it’s going to kill tons of people. it will probably kill me. oh well, does it matter? probably not because i’m a stupid fucking whore, who isn’t a hero. i should be ashamed of myself…

Is this what we are teaching our young people? If you make mistakes, shame on you? You no longer deserve our love/support? If so, then we need not worry about the christian not-so-right folks. We have a far greater enemy in ourselves.