The Day I Was Told I Had HIV

Image

I was taking pills without really knowing what I had. Born sickly, in my head, I thought they were remedies to cure my illness of all times, namely fever, malaria… I was not informed about my illness, and my brothers and sisters had never spoken to me about it.

It was in the fourth grade, if I remember correctly, when I was on leave at a friend of my sister's, that I was told about my illness. I will explain a little how my sister's friend told me. It was at sunset that my sister's friend (let's call her aunt Mélanie) being on the balcony and me in the living room called me to come and join her outside so that she had something to tell me. When she arrived, she started asking me questions, namely if I knew why I was taking the remedies every day. As a person ignorant of her illness, I answered no. She explained to me that if I was taking these pills, it was because I had HIV/AIDS and told me that I had acquired it from my mother at birth and we don't know how my mother managed to get it, knowing that my brothers don't have HIV and I am the only one in the family who is HIV positive. My reaction? Nothing. I listened attentively and she made me understand that it was not the end of the world and that as long as I took my treatment properly, I would have no problems.

Some time later, my late sister Lili also sat me down to talk to me about my illness, in the presence of one of her friends and her friend's daughter. They told me the same thing as Aunt Mélanie, explaining my transmission, my treatment, etc. while specifying that I do not have AIDS which is the illness, but rather HIV. Later, my older sister had also called me (I had two sisters) after Lili and Aunt Sylvia had spoken to me to explain things to me again.

But had I really understood? In reality, no, and I think that I had been told too young and too early. I was maybe already 14 years old, but I was not open-minded enough to understand what I really had. Knowing that, they did everything to show me that it was nothing serious, but forgot to tell me about the way others looked at this disease, the stigma, the rejection that surrounds it. At least, I would have been better informed about everything that I was going to go through as an HIV-positive person.

At 14, there are already young people who are very open-minded and have a sense of discernment, but at the time, I was not. I was the youngest, naive and sensitive, who thought that the world was rosy and my illness, as my sisters and brothers said, was nothing serious. Yes, it is nothing serious, I have a normal life expectancy like a healthy person, but the truth is there, HIV-positive people are so stigmatized, and when I do research on HIV according to the perception of others, it is only negative that you read in the majority.

[T]hey did everything to show me that it was nothing serious, but forgot to tell me about the way others looked at this disease, the stigma, the rejection that surrounds it.

It was from the second class that I really understood that I am HIV-positive. Since then, nothing was the same as before. When we talked about this illness in middle school, my face changed, I became a little cold, distant and I no longer wanted to do anything. I still remember, when I was in the first year, my French teacher asked me to read part of a text that talked about HIV/AIDS, I got up and forced myself to read, but as I read, I didn't feel well, and I couldn't continue and as a lie, I told my teacher that I had a sore throat. So she asked another student to continue reading. And as soon as I sat down, I put my head on the table and tears rolled down my face.

In fact, when we talked about HIV/AIDS in middle school, all my morning joy turned into sadness and tears. A sadness that contains many unanswered questions. Why me? What did I do? Why, among my brothers and sisters, did this disease have to fall on me? And my classmates didn't help me much, because once, still in first year, my science teacher had brought up the chapter on HIV/AIDS, and the way he talked about this disease increased the fear and rejection among my classmates even more. There was also awareness, but for HIV-positive people, there was no support for us. And when you know that in the society where you live HIV is very stigmatized, my classmates will only receive advice from the teacher who says in a less implicit way to avoid people who have HIV, to be afraid because they would be contaminated.

With all that, how could I not hate my disease? Who likes being sick first of all or to think that they have an incurable and also transmissible disease? No one, and even worse when you know that your classmate has this disease, and that's where my ordeal begins.