As part of a collaboration with our longtime partner organization Christie's Place, The Well Project will be sharing stories from their book "Healing Hope: A woven tapestry of strength and solace" as blog entries on our A Girl Like Me platform. The views and opinions expressed in this project are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Well Project.
**Content Warning** This piece discusses intimate partner violence (resources available at the bottom of this page)
If you are feeling threatened right now, call 911 or the National Domestic Violence hotline in the US at 800-799-SAFE [1-800-799-7233; or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY)]. You can also search for a safe space online at Domestic Shelters (https://www.domesticshelters.org/).
Translation of anonymous audio transcription
Lea este blog en español
Hello. I want to tell my story about how I got HIV because I want other people to know that they can still move forward with their lives if they have it. You don't have to see it as something negative in your life; you can see it as something completely opposite. You can see it as a chance to move forward in life.
I got married when I was 16 years old. I was very young. The relationship really didn't work. I had a baby girl. And then I separated from my husband when my child was five because, honestly, it really wasn't what I wanted for my life. I dedicated myself to my work, and I tried to make sure I could do the best for my daughter.
After a while, I met someone. I say it was love at first sight when I met that guy. And without giving it a second thought, I was so dumb—I know now, but it seemed like a good idea then—we moved in together. I didn't see that he was a person with a lot of bad habits. I grew up in my house with my parents and my siblings, and I never knew anyone who drank or smoked, much less did drugs. So, I had never experienced anything like that. When I got together with him, I didn't realize he was using drugs. The only thing I noticed was that he was a very violent man. He could switch quickly from being happy to being mad, to being very frustrated. He was very mean.
The first time he hit me, it was just because he had asked me to make him some chiles rellenos. I thought to myself, "Well, how do you make chiles rellenos?" I didn't know how to make them because my mother never taught me how to cook. Well, maybe my mom taught me how to cook, but I was never really paying attention. So, I made him those chiles, but I didn't roast them first. I didn't even remember that they needed to be roasted. I never cooked in my first marriage because I was the first daughter-in-law. My mother-in-law gave me everything so I didn't need to know how to cook or anything else. So then, when he ate those chiles, well, he just exploded because he thought they were raw. He stood up, and he came over to me very cautiously and did something I never thought he would do. It seemed like it was premeditated like he already knew what he was going to do. He slapped me really hard. My eye started to swell. I got up from my chair, and I went to my bed, and I started to cry. He came in, and he rubbed a soft hand on me. He asked for forgiveness, and I forgave him.
That was the first of many times that he would become violent. He yelled at me. He came at me. He slapped me. After a while, I got pregnant. I really loved him, and I really thought he would change. But, nope, he didn't change. Sometimes it seemed like everything was so lovely. And sometimes there was so much sweetness, but then suddenly it was all violent. I used to say that I would leave him, and then I would say that I would stay with him, and that's how it was for a long time. He was really awful to my little girl. He was harsh. And I lived through a lot of hard times. But I still kept trying.
And then I met a woman where I worked. She invited me to a few meetings they hold here in a hotel in Tijuana about personal development and learning to love yourself. When I started to go to those with that lady, I understood that I was living in a world that was not normal and I decided to separate from my husband. When I left him, he started to look for me everywhere and was causing a lot of problems. Then he told me that he really loved me and he missed me and now I realize that was just a big bunch of lies. Nothing was true. But at the time, I believed him. We got back together several times, and I left him several times. And that created a vicious circle.
We had been separated for about a year. I lived my life, and he lived his. And suddenly his mom started looking for me, asking me to take our son to see his father. I thought it was a little strange and I told my sister what was happening. I started to think that he could really want to see our son. I guessed he might be getting married and I was happy for him. Well, that's what I thought. It was my idea to take him to see his dad because, after all, our son was a bit older by then.
My husband was still a pretty young man. He was just 35 and he was very handsome. When I took my son to see his father, he was sitting in a chair, and it seemed like he was suddenly 60. He was very thin, really emaciated, and I was so shocked. They told me that he was really sick but they didn't tell me why and the only thing I could think was that maybe he was anemic. I knew he used drugs. I continued to visit him sometimes, and they would always tell me that he was just sick and they were still running a lot of tests. Later, his mother told me that he was very ill and there wasn't a cure. After a bunch of tests, they decided to give him an HIV test, and he tested positive. He was already so weak, and he had AIDS, but the doctors were going to do everything they could to try and help him. They tried everything, but in the end, he passed away. When he died, his sisters told me that I needed to take the test too. I asked, why me? I'd barely seen him over the last year.
At the time, my son was already in junior high school, and I had heard somewhere about how they taught him about HIV. I had seen ads about it, but I could never have imagined that it would have anything to do with me. I thought only people in Africa got that. I just decided that I didn't have it and I wasn't going to get tested. The truth was that I was really afraid. I thought you could catch AIDS just by being close to someone or if someone touched your hand. When I found out that my husband had AIDS, I kept my son away because I was so afraid he might catch it from his father. Now I realize it was so silly and I really regret that I did that.
Sometime after that, I made arrangements to see some friends. To get to their place, I had to pass by a church. I'm not really religious. My mom would say we were Catholics when I was a kid. But deep inside, I don't have a religion, but I do believe in God. I'm really close to God because I think God has shown me many times that he's been at my side. As I passed by that church, something told me to go in. There was a clinic next to the church. When I left the church, I wasn't even thinking about it; I just walked into the clinic. The nurse there gave me an HIV test, and she told me that she wouldn't have results until the next day. She told me that if the results weren't there in the clinic, I'd have to go to the lab where they sent all the tests. And I asked her, "Well, why would they have to go to a lab? Is it because the results were positive?" She told me not to worry about that.
The next day I went to the clinic, and they told me that my results weren't there. I'd have to go to the lab. I was scared. I was really terrified because I'd seen how my husband ended up, and I started to think the worst. I had seen how bad it got, how he was always running a fever that never came down, how he often had diarrhea. When I got to the lab, the nurse there told me they needed to take a new test just as a routine measure. I asked him why, but he didn't want to tell me. He just wanted to redo the test. I told him that if he didn't want to tell me why, then I wasn't going to get tested again. That nurse was very kind. He explained to me that my results had come out positive but that sometimes there was a mistake and they needed to double-check.
I knew there was no mistake in those results. Something just told me that. But I decided to let them do it, and I tested positive again. When I got the results, I felt like I'd be dead by the next day. I got the shivers, and I felt death lurking over me. I called my sister-in-law to pick me up, and she told me not to be afraid; everything they had done for my husband, they would do for me so that I could go on with my life.
My son was 12, turning 13, when I started to tell him about my status. I took him out to eat somewhere, and I started to cry. And he asked why I was crying. Well, I just answered that I didn't want to leave him alone and I didn't want to die and that I was scared. My son looked at me, and he said that I wasn't going to die because there were treatments. My son had learned a lot about HIV in his junior high school, and he had a lot of information. My son is very mature, and he started to talk to me about how we were going to get through this as long as I took good care of myself and took my medication.
I started taking all my medications and going to my support groups, trying to stay positive. And after a while, I began to understand that HIV can be a blessing, and I began to understand the most challenging thing in life. If you want to, you can get the best out of life. I was always really careful about not smoking, not drinking, not staying up late, and all those things. Now I'm even more careful. But my whole thought process has changed. I started going to self-help groups to learn how to love myself. I'm learning to love myself and to value everything and everyone in my life.
If you or someone you know would like resources or support in relation to the themes above, please see:
