So fascinating!

My Road To Diagnosis

My personal journey began clichéd enough – writing in a secret leather diary I intended to keep away from prying eyes, chronicling my life and emotions. Whenever I put pen to paper, I escaped the cycle of depression that seemed to rinse, lather and repeat on me.

What unfolded after, I did not quite expect.  My mother found my diary. As any curious mother would, she read it, probably expecting whimsical stories about schoolboy crushes, maybe even the resultant romps with them and the little babies we would have (adopted). Sure, it did have that, at least at first, but progressively, it got gloomier. My diary served as self-therapy after all, and one does not exactly go to a therapist to recite all that’s good in life. I had been writing pretty dark things.

Keeping yourself recluse can do that to you, and let me tell you, writing when you’re contemplating suicide doesn’t come out nice on paper. I imagine she was wincing, but my mother read on, perhaps stoked that life’s intervening allowed her into the sanctum that is the mind of a scared, misunderstood teen.

You see, weeks before she found my diary, I had been fearing that I could be HIV-positive. About a year before, I took a free HIV test during World AIDS Day that came out negative, as it did the year prior. Two successive years of being HIV-free tend to make you feel invincible. A feeling that was shattered when my best friend who was every bit of as promiscuous sexually active told me he had herpes… and gonorrhoea and syphilis.

Long story short, I had followed him to the clinic for his follow-up appointment for moral support, and had picked up brochures about HIV for casual reading to hide my face in, hoping I didn’t get seen by anyone I knew while in the clinic, or in disgusting ignorance, thinking I could lose my perceived STD virginity by catching it from sitting in the waiting room. I realised, wait a minute, I’ve got a few of these symptoms for HIV. I had shrugged it off (or more likely, entered a state of denial) to the seasonal flu. I did that until came the thrush, and nightly chills.

All this was penned in my sacred diary, defiled by my mother’s eyes. As a reprisal for her desecration, my words put her in a state of unrest – not unlike the frame of mind I myself was in. She got into cahoots with my best friend for an intervention. An intervention that would bring me to the very clinic I was afraid to be seen in, but this time less afraid of catching a disease as being diagnosed with one. My best friend came with me, my mother in tow. All of us were on edge as we waited over half an hour before the results came through.

I guess you’d have guessed by now that the test came up positive;  if not I won’t be here writing and would perhaps, more than ever be up in a place of self-righteous ignorance telling myself ‘it can never happen to me, it only happens in stories.’  I’ll save the sappy parts for another time, but for the matter, most of it came from my mother. I got my diagnosis and just sat stunned in disbe-grief. My mother did most of the crying, like she was crying for two, and my best friend ended up consoling her more than me.

A successive blow came when I had to put my family in financial strain with my month-long hospitalisation after my CD4 count came in with AIDS-level numbers.  I racked up hospital bills over $25,000 for treatments for TB, operations and regular scans.

It was during this time that my mother did her very best, forced not only to come to terms with my sexuality, my sexual activity but also my HIV and at the time, what looked to her like my impending death. She certainly put it that way whenever she spoke to me while I lied helpless in bed, with IV shackles. It’s like I skipped all the basic lessons and little journeys you need for parenting and just dunked her in straight in the deep end of the pool. Of course, with anyone who’s been thrown in to drown, she was furious when she got over the initial shock.

Not long after, our relationship took an even deeper swim than when I had first thrown her in, to the point we did not speak for weeks. Things got so bad, I moved out of the house for almost 2 months after a huge argument. Jobless undergraduate at 20 – not very common with us traditional Asians!  I relied on the compassion and support of friends, all the while thinking, is this the fate I’m resigned to?

The first step to fixing my life came from the most unlikeliest place. Grindr. That was where I would find the nicest 30-something-year-old-man who in the short time of knowing me, offered his house keys and trust after he figured out I was technically homeless. He even got me a job waiting tables. You’d be surprised to know he was an ex-convict,  fresh out of prison, living in a rental flat, who did not force himself on me or expect sexual favours in return. We really only went as far as talking, sometimes cuddling in the morning and me doing my part in cleaning the apartment (mostly my own mess though). It was during this time, when I had much time to think, that a revelation struck me.

All of the bad things had to happen, like my diagnosis, my subsequent hospitalisation and me moving out of the house (my friends would joke and insist on calling a spade a spade – I ran away, like a desperate overgrown teen). If these things had not happened, I doubt either me or my mother could have found it in us to allow reconciliation to happen. It could only transpire after we found ourselves from being lost and caught up in our own situation, hers with disappointment and myself with admitted guilt and self-pity. Amidst all this, we had no time to find the love that bonded us as mother and son. Our relationship had years of strain, and consequently needed time to rid itself of pain.

A year on, and I can’t say we’re perfect. We still have our spats and misunderstandings every now and then, but every family has those. What matters is the worst is behind us, and we discovered through it all how strong our love for each other is. If we could get through that, and find it in ourselves to forgive each other, and ourselves, to move on… we could get through anything.  We after all share the same blood – even if one has HIV coursing through it.

As published on PositiveLite.com

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