Owning a Handbag Doesn't Make You a Handbag

Translated from Spanish

Para leer en español, haga clic aquí.

I am a 59-year-old woman. Almost 8 months ago I received an HIV-positive diagnosis.

Unexpected, surprising, incomprehensible, and unfair. With these four adjectives I can describe that first impact that the diagnosis generated in me. It was as if the floor had cracked and the ceiling had fallen on top, both at the same time, in perfect simultaneity.

How was this happening to me? A strictly monogamous woman, married for 18 years, who didn't know what even a brush with a man other than her husband was, one of those women who are called "decent". How could I be the object of HIV's desire?

Denial, sadness, deep anger, very deep, disappointment, were feelings that accompanied me for some months, luckily only a few.

Faced with the impact, I appealed to rationality: I immediately looked for places to start found one regular, another worse, until I found the best. A few days later I started my treatment and in less than 6 months my body responded gratefully: undetectable, I am a healthy woman in the most absolute meaning of that word.

I was able to draw on everything that sustained me: faith in God, the practice of Yoga, listening to sacred music and even praises in Hebrew, I treated myself to moments of deep silence and meditation.

Sometimes it was hard for me to meditate because tears covered my desolate face with so much sadness. Meditation turned out how it turned out but I never abandoned it.

I started therapy and it was a one way trip. I had no one to tell or at least that was what my shame made me believe. But shame of what?

It was always clear to me who would be the first person I would tell, but as a preliminary step I needed to feel good and be able to convey the peace of mind that I still did not feel.

It was so that a month after starting therapy I told my daughter. And that day I ended up as exhausted as happy. I remember going to a candy shop with delicious sweets to have a snack with the best company: myself.

I have been in treatment for 8 months, I am not the same and I thank God for that.

I want this journey that I am beginning by sharing my experience on this blog to be a grain of sand to give HIV a human face, because behind the diagnosis there is a biography, there is a story and that is what makes the storm weather the best that it can be, that the acceptance process is as it is for everyone.

I hope that reading my experience will help you look inside yourself and recognize yourself with all your strengths and resources: love, purity, peace, wisdom and vitality, like a lotus flower.

Owning a handbag does not make you a handbag, so keep in mind: HIV does not define you.

I'm not HIV, neither are you.

Hugs to you.