(This is a long overdue blog.)
Thank you Job Corps in Louisville, Kentucky. This is where I received my HIV diagnosis in 1991, after living a life of violence as a teen and an ex non-active gang member when I was 17. I wanted to change my life around. I wanted to leave the past in the past and I was finally seeing a light. My social worker suggested that I leave Miami and go to Louisville. I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was about to turn 18 on April 11 and little did I know that a week after my 18th birthday I would receive this news.
You all know how things were in 1991. It was a death sentence and people were dropping like flies. My mother and brother and I decided to move back to Colombia where I was born to my grandparents' home to die. I know that it was meant for me "US" to go back to Colombia, as I gave my grandparents the best last years of their lives. I was there from 1991 to 2001 with no medication. I didn't know anyone that had HIV. We had no social media and no support groups as I've always said. I had to lie for the first 10 years of me being diagnosed when I returned to Miami because, unfortunately, I had to get the devastating news to my mother, who is my everything and my rock, through the phone. I returned back to Miami, she sat me down and she said, Daughter, I feel it in my heart and my soul that you are not going to die of this. We have to tell family and friends that you have something else because there's a lot of ignorance and stigma. So it was between lupus and leukemia. It was very hard to live that lie for 10 years, lying about me having leukemia.
I will be eternally grateful to Job Corps for not discriminating against me, for making me feel like a human being.
Going back to when I received the news: I remember a cold gray room with a doctor who was asking me angrily and with eyes of horror, Why haven't you come into the clinic if we've been sending you slips? As any teenager would answer I said I don't know. The only reason I went to the clinic is because I needed to get discharged so I could return back to Miami for a week so I could celebrate my birthday with mother and brother. He sat me down me down, he didn't prepare me, he just blurted out You have AIDS. He was very ignorant and irresponsible to give a teenager that news with no empathy, no compassion, and he had no way of knowing if my immune system was so destroyed that I had an AIDS diagnosis. My whole life passed in front of me. I said to myself, I'm never gonna get married. I'm never gonna have children. My life is over. I remember we didn't even have one pamphlet. There was no medicine but AZT in high dosages. God knows I tried, but I felt my brain burning, my veins burning, my stomach burning, and my mouth tasted like metal. I said to my mother, I'd rather die than feel this way. But I didn't die. I am still here.
I do not remember his name; maybe someone who reads this remembers Job Corps in Louisville, Kentucky in 1991, who the person in charge was. He came all the way through the fields to the clinic where I was numb and in shock. He treated me with so much compassion and love. I was just mute like someone hit me in the head really hard and my ears were ringing. I remember him telling me, Maria you don't have to leave Job Corps. There's another little kid that's living with HIV here and taking the only treatment available AZT. I told him that the doses were high, which, by the way, the doctors wanted me to sign a waiver that said it could damage my internal organs, and I said hell, no. I know AZT saved a lot of lives, but it also killed a lot of people and I went with my intuition.
Treatment works and I urge everyone to get tested, even married people, because you know what you're doing, but you don't know what the other person is doing!!
So I will be eternally grateful to Job Corps for not discriminating against me, for making me feel like a human being, 🙏 for not doing the same thing as the Milton Hershey School, that I actually went after because of discrimination. They discriminated against a teen who won a scholarship to be there. When they found out he had HIV, they considered him a biohazard because people lived in there, just like Job Corps!!! Ultimately, they got sued, and I was one of the activists that fought against them and created awareness. They even had the nerve to say that he could come back???!!! What an insult and how shameful - because we were not in 1991 when this happened!
I hope that the person in charge of Job Corps is still alive and reads this one day. 🙏 Thank you for being an amazing human being and an example. This led me to the future when I returned to the United States dying and got on treatment and became undetectable since the year 2001, to my mission and purpose, and ultimately became a tester and counselor so no one would receive the news like I did. I will grab them and say, Look at me look at me as your example. You are not going to die, and if you do what you are supposed to do, you will live a long life. And this was before Undetectable equals Untransmittable. I am now a 36 year long-term survivor of HIV and have a normal immune system.
Be mindful of your words because many people don't get on treatment because of the self-stigma and because of the ignorant comments that they hear from their own.
Treatment works and I urge everyone to get tested, even married people, because you know what you're doing, but you don't know what the other person is doing!! Ultimately, I came out of the HIV closet in a huge way!! Social media was starting to be the beast that I knew it would be and that through it I would reach the masses in all four corners of the world, and I decided with no shame or self stigma to put HIV in the middle of my name - it just came to me. Yes, it was a marketing strategy to attract those living with HIV already or those that were curious about why I had HIV in the middle of my name. I'm the only person in the world and I think that speaks volumes, no shame no stigma!!! Education is the key because as we all know, stigma is what kills. Silence equals death so we have to continue fighting for access to treatment so we can all live productive and healthy lives. And as we know, and I've mentioned in this blog, when you are living with the human condition of HIV and on effective treatment, you cannot pass HIV to anyone sexually. Zero chance. Period.
Be mindful of your words because many people don't get on treatment because of the self-stigma and because of the ignorant comments that they hear from their own. It could be your brother, sister, grandmother, father, best friend - they are living in silence and shame. I had to keep this big secret for 10 years, but I am free now and I'm living my life purpose and mission, which is simply to lead by example, give hope to the hopeless, and prevent new HIV infections. I truly believe that we will have a cure very soon. This is my hope, especially for those that are just starting this journey. Science has advanced so much, you can have children, get married, go to school, go to the gym, travel... we're monitored all the time so we're healthier than most. With that, I'm not minimizing what we long-term survivors have been through, as many times before I've said we need a special assessment because we have many issues because of the severe loss we faced: PTSD, depression, anxiety, and survivors guilt.
All my love for you Job Corps; I've been meaning to write this blog for years! I recently did, but it got erased - not this time.
Much love and light,
Maria Mejia
