When I was diagnosed with HIV almost 17 years ago I dove head first into activism. I was angry and I needed something to do with that anger or I would have turned it onto myself. What I didn't realize is that I had already done that and what I did not know is that I would let that anger build for almost two decades before I accepted it. This anger sat buried deep inside of me festering and growing; bleeding out into the core of my soul. Anger that I should have never directed to myself, as it never belonged with me more than I had already allowed it to for my part. Shame. Embarrassment. Self-hatred. It seeped into every part of me. While I denied its existence, it grew stronger with every ignorant denial that it was there. Refusing to allow the anger to reside with the man that knowingly transmitted HIV to me and at least a dozen others, because I knew the hurt that had to infest a person for them to do such things. I knew that loathing of self was worse than anything my anger would do. I felt giving him any more than I had already was too much for me to bear after everything. Never realizing that this anger was becoming rage and self-loathing. Denying it was killing me. Continue reading...
