image credit: beautiful mag
i have been wondering about how to wear my hiv at this point in my life. i mean i wore it for so long as a scar of some sort or something to hide or a burden even. but time has changed me, and my perspective about my hiv has changed with it. i am now 22 years poz and it really is a part of me. it's not a sideline, it's not separate, but it's integral to who i am.
i guess my question is more about how i carry it. you know, part of me considers it a blessing. i have afforded the opportunity to cross through a ring of fire- or death. i had to deal with that inevitability long before many of the world citizens my age. please understand i know that many deal with this same issue much younger than i as well.
as i approach 50 years on the planet, i find myself becoming a bit more philosophical i guess. i didn't know how to meander as a young gay man growing into my own. so i did what others around me did. and that included many of their pitfalls and many of their misperceptions. and now i am hoping to leave the beginnings of a blueprint for gay men to come so that not every single one must make all the same mistakes. i hope that they might find it easier to get on track if they wander off course if some sort of guideline exists.
it has been said that gay culture is a patchwork of tribes. that there is not one but many definitive ruling tribes. i would agree. we are factioned and splintered. we are special interests. and i also believe hiv poz gay men could easily comprise one of the larger gay men's tribes on the planet. and we, as gay poz men, have an opportunity to create a legacy of wellness and survival that hasn't been written or passed down yet. we already have scaled the walls of self doubt and care. we know what it's like to be in fear of our health, of aging, of isolation, of discrimination. we have had to come through this. many of us have dealt with addiction issues and had to survive and thrive through them.
maybe now we can begin to not only be one of the larger tribes in our gay nation, but act accordingly.
1 comment:
"maybe now we can begin to not only be one of the larger tribes in our gay nation, but act accordingly"
Well, that reads like being a large tribe somehow means to "act accordingly" would be to act well. We have a bunch of large tribes in this country, and that doesn't mean much in the ethical or tolerance department--the Southern Baptists, Republicans, Mormons, and Aryan Supremacists come to mind.
What I think we need to ask is: what do we have in common as gay men that can positively inform our behavior as a group to the larger world? Being attracted to our own sex doesn't quite cut it. What can serve as as a unifier and uplifter is that we ALL know what it is like to be marginalized, therefore, we can ALL agree that we should never contribute to anything which causes others to feel so marginalized. In this way, we turn our source of grief into our greatest asset.
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