In response to Walking the Thin Black Line of Violence in the Lives of HIV+ Women by Loren Jones, Board Member, Positive Women’s Network-USA
I was thinking the same thing when I read about a Day of Action to End Violence. Against Women. I was thinking… Where is the solution? Being a woman who has experienced so much violence and you describe it beautifully well; however sad… it’s true.
We wish to teach our children to stand up, to fight, to advocate for themselves. Then the reality of what you’re up against becomes very real.
A friend, a lover, someone you just met. That individual, at some time, decides for you it’s time to pay for this friendship. I want you to love me. Love = Sex (this is why I have so much trouble being in love with anything). You feel the rage roll off them; and to you it’s delivered. Smothering you beneath the stench of lust, lunacy and fear. All the while being the slave to their desires and needs.
To fight back may be easier and sometimes to live you let it play out. Pain, disgust, the fear, my stomach hurts so bad; my head is spinning.
I can't die like this.
Endurance and perseverance are what get me through in order to arrive back where I started with yet another deep wound from battle. Smiling and acting as if it were just a nightmare.
As you help others, forgetting your pain, you grow a little more insane each day. I use insanity because if you look up the word insanity it is doing the same thing over and over trying to reach a different outcome.
I don't like scary movies. I lived most of my life in a horror movie and have not yet been killed off.
This subject really makes me angry. I ask for help from others. I am told to dress differently. I am told not to go to that store. Stay away from the city. So I isolate, slipping more and more from reality. I have literally lost touch with reality on several occasions due to inflicted violence by an intimate partner or a person who sees me as a whore. (Of course the friend of the friend tells them how good I was.) Hell you left me not much choice.
Suck it up Bitch or I’ll cut you, I’ll beat you, I’ll break your face.
I try to be hope and light to other women who are able to open up to me. I have comforted, bandaged, held, and cared for the woman taking this kind of abuse more times than I would like to count. Never do I mention the hurt, pain and Hate, yes a strong word Hate; I carry buried in my soul. At this very moment I cannot feel your pain as you feel it. I am not you. I can comfort and create a very safe place for you even if it’s in my arms for just a moment. I have helped men stomped on by other men for being gay. THIS IS REAL LIFE SHIT PEOPLE ARE ENDURING.
I know it’s not because "I wore a small dress" or "my heels were too high". "I had too much makeup on” or "that boy looks too gay, he is not like us". For whatever the reason... HIV is just another slap in the face, another way I have given up my power to some POS scum. Ugh!!
Back to the basic rules… you can’t be pretty, sexy, smart, handsome, clean cut, have a job, not have a job, be transgender, or bisexual.
Once I say, "Hello, I am me. I love to dance, sing in the shower, and I love working with others.” Now that gets translated into the big question: I want to have SEX. I don't get the translation or how it comes though but 9 out of 10 times it's what I experience.
You must not like me if you don't want to have sex with me. Duh, no I don't want to have sex with you because I don't want to have sex with you. Under the current laws you must at that point tell that you are HIV positive. Perfect time to get the "Oh, it’s OK” talk. Of course from your professional sex expert about to dominate and violently rape you, now even more furious for you have been being dishonest. Dishonest? I did not come to have sex, I came here to shop for groceries. Yes all over the place a stalker, a sick MF, takes his victims as planned as a grocery list.
This is so real to me and to others. Yet I am the violator for my dress, my status, my smile. IT’S ALL MY FAULT. I DESERVE WHAT I GET.
I will no longer be silent and I will endure what I have to to be heard, to make changes. This is wrong on so many levels. Please excuse me. This is personal. I got taken away by own passion.
Thank you for sharing this. Each time I put pen to paper instead of hiding whats really going on, I become less broken and like the glass maker does to broken glass, I am being molded into a beautiful work of art. Intimate Partner Violence, Violence Against Women, and Criminalization Laws must change in order for us to feel safe enough to come forward and face the whole tragic events over and to be able to prosecute the real criminals.
Each time I share this story and depending on the details I relive the journey of that evening (one of many). The beautiful person on the inside I once was has turned dark and cold from years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. When will this not be OK? What can we do to help change these patterns?
The scariest part is when I (or another woman/man) goes to seek the abuse for loneliness has set in and it’s the only love that our body understands. Yes, I seek violence when I get scared because I am familiar with it. I know how to handle being broken. I know how to hurt and live.
Today, as I write this, voicing how very disturbed and sick inside - from Violence, not HIV - I am, I heal a little more with each day, and with each blog.
#EndVAWHIV #PWN #AGLM #Thewellproject
