Jack and Coke Please

As we approach World AIDS Day, I sit and think about how far I have come, or how far I've walked in this journey and this sometimes dark and cold alley we call "living with HIV". Somedays, I count the days left in the month by the number of pills left in my bottle and other days...I embrace the love that I have found in my partner and the support I have from family and friends. This journey is surely not given to the swift but to the one that can endure and be positive. Somedays it's hard to breathe, it's also hard to believe that you are confined to an affair with an expensive drug habit that you cannot live without and if you do live with out it...will you really live? This weekend, I went through those emotions and I admit, it placed me into reality...not my reality per se but the reality of what others who are living with HIV or who have someone they love living with HIV goes through.

I often wonder if being liberated had a taste or a definite feeling..i know being liberated and free comes in many shapes and forms for everyone and it's different depending on your level of bondage prior to the amazing brick being crushed.

before being liberated, there is a gradual process that we all have gone through, it's mostly the fear of shame and humiliation most often time injected upon ourselves by what we think others may perceive of us because of who we are or what we strive to be. in all honesty in these cases we have not given people enough credit as well as ourselves to first be more open minded enough to give people the benefit of the doubt as well as enough strength to just shed off the layer of "what if...and will they". it's often times easier said than done either coming out as gay, transgendered, or even HIV positive.

I look back on my life and remember in 2006 when I made the decision to move to Baltimore to attend grad school but most importantly to finally live free and unbounded by the reality I knew in South Carolina as carrying a burden of being gay. I remember a year before that picking up a copy of E. Lynn Harris "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" and being so ready to break free like how E. Lynn did in the book when he moved to NY. Well, I didn't move to NY, but Baltimore was time enough for me. I entered my first relationship in 2006 and in 2008 found out I was HIV positive (talk about being a star character in that book).

In the midst of the AIDS 2012 conference I found myself thinking about next steps and where should I be going in this life? I took a break from my advocacy work and volunteering because I got really tired of seeing the same "power faces" in the meetings I attended and it seems as though nothing was happening for the people living with HIV/AIDS here in the District.  Seems as though the more I get angry and fight and advocate the numbers are still rising and the stigma is thicker than it was before I was diagnosed in 2008.

It's crazy how we spend soo much time...looking and asking..and searching for the perfect relationship but does that really exist? well..in my world of HIV...it's like finding the secret brick that will make the wall collapse if you hit it just right...well anyway..in my quest for Mr big...it has a mixture of someone who would like to have a family some day..and someone who is kinda on the same lines and page as me..not just the same book...why is it soo crazy..to find one man...some man...a piece of man..that wants children and a family...when i get the men..they are just out of a crazy ass relationship, divorced, or the best one..bitter and don't even know if they can "LOVE" again or "TRUST"..classic..soo not only do I need a leather couch and Valium in my house...but a full out counselor for them when they walk through the door..i just don't understand...is it something that i am giving off? is it something that i am saying? i told one person..maybe it's because when i meet people i put all my cards on the table..and i should be hiding them instead..