I am 53, which is ancient for a gay man these days. At least ancient for a gay man who came out of the closet twenty plus years ago, as ACT-UP was declaring war on the Reagan-Bush Administration. AIDS was already out of the closet, killing off droves of my generation, who suffered immeasurably and died horrible deaths from HIV, while our government looked on and did literally nothing. The emotions I carry with me, as I look back on my life now, have remained an open sore for these past 20-odd years and I rarely, consciously, even acknowledge them these days because they are too personal and painful, and have been so processed, reprocessed and re-reprocessed, over and over again in my mind and my soul that I am now a product of those feelings rather than the other way round. I am HIV negative. I have outlived two partners, who passed away from HIV/AIDS in the early days of the pandemic and I have borne witness to the passing of an entire generation of gay men, my friends, our greatest generation, as they've succumbed and died from this horrible virus. The virus hasn't killed me, but has hallowed me out emotionally. And while I'm not technically a "long-term survivor", I sort of am.
I take much joy from the many friends I've managed to surround myself with in recent years, but the yearning to share my inner self with that one special individual remains out of reach. I don't think I'll ever be able to again give of myself to the extent necessary to be a full partner in a fulfilling relationship. That part of me has a thick, impenetrable callus over it that no amount of TLC will ever smooth away. My last partner, as he was leaving, told me I was selfish. At first I was outraged at the accusation because I was beyond generous with him in the 10 years we were together. Then it dawned on me that he was implying selfish as in not sharing much of myself. And after much thought I came to understand. I don't open up and allow full access to myself any more. I keep my inner thoughts and dreams and wishes close to myself rather than allowing complete access, even in my longest term relationship with him. I believe that has to do with losing too many close friends in my past... To open up and really share of your inner self takes friendship to another level. A level that can break you if severed the way many of my previous relationships have been severed.
Joshua was from North Dakota, and men from that part of the country steal your heart and never really give it back. I met Joshua 20 years ago, shortly after arriving in Boston and discovering I had been outed. Undergraduate Joshua moved in with me a few weeks after we met, and shared his life and love with me over the next few years. Joshua finished his degree as the virus was just starting to make it's presence felt, or maybe it was the AZT that was taking it's toll on him. AZT did that to many folks in the early days. But either way, he decided the HIV/AIDS support available in SF was what he needed and SF was where he needed to be. He left Boston for CA shortly thereafter. There were no formal ties binding us, and after I failed to secure employment out there we decided to move on with our separate lives. Joshua passed away a few short years later, his final years working with the Names Project. How he passed away is another topic for another diary...
I met Chris a couple years later and we were together a few years before the disease and the drugs employed to fight the disease and the emotional toll of coping with the disease took him from us. And no, after losing Joshua to AIDS, I didn't go out looking to fall for someone carrying the virus. But in those days, carrying the virus was a certain death sentence. And these guys, who in the prime of their lives, who were out doing something as 'natural' as exploring their newly discovered sexuality, were given this death sentence, were wise and compassionate and loving in a very profound way, which was hard not to be attracted to. It infuriates me that even today, many men place "d&d free, looking for same" in their personal ads as one of the criteria for meeting in online forums and dating services. So let me make this perfectly clear, the federal government makes it a crime to discriminate based on HIV status but gay guys online feel free to display this discrimination when looking to date. I find it appalling. But this too is another matter for another diary.
Chris was a great kid when we met, and had been living with the virus since he was a teenager. Being diagnosed with a fatal disease in your late teens messes with your view of yourself, your view of the world and how you fit into that world. Chris was tossed from his home by his Dad after his diagnosis and learned to make a living for himself doing handy work. He was a bright guy, but he could never find the motivation to stick with anything for long and as a result drifted from job to job and home to home, never finding lasting fulfillment in anything. Remember, living under the cloud of HIV in those early days was a certain death sentence. There were no long term survivors in the early days of the pandemic, before antivirals and drug cocktails, so once you sero-converted, you were looking at a very short life expectancy.
Within the first couple of years we were together, Chris went from coping fairly well with his situation, to mild depression, to not giving a damn about himself or the world, to serious depression, to drug abuse, to relationship abuse, to drug addiction, to a brief recovery, to his death in his early thirties. I walked away before things got too out of hand when his Mom came forcefully back into his life and tried to get his downward spiral under control. We had never lived together, so the options available to me for getting him the help he needed were very limited. Chris had made it to recovery stage with his addictions after a year of us being separated. Part of the treatment was cutting off contact with his old life and the scattered reports I got suggested he had moved his life forward and was "sober" and finding peace with himself once again. As part of his 12-step program, about a year after we'd seen each other the previous time, he asked to meet for lunch. We shared a rather awkward meal where I let him know there were no hard feelings, and that was our last face-to-face interaction. I heard of his passing from a mutual friend and his Mom contacted me about his memorial service at the U.U. church in town. I decided not to attend, because I didn't think any public service would or could do justice to our life together. The struggles we endured, and pain inflicted, the seemingly wasted efforts to guide him to some other ending were something I could share with his Mom but not something I could share with the public or feel honest about glossing over at a memorial service. I'm certain my decision not to attend hurt his Mom dearly but I needed to be true to myself in the end.
submitted by tnichlsn
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That which does not kill us makes us stronger. -Friedrich Nietzsche
I hate to argue with Nietzsche, but in this instance, that which killed us made us stronger. AIDS has not only made us stronger, but it has given us our voice as a community. A voice that has already faced down the most heinous virus to stalk humanity in a generation. And a voice that stared into the face of the most cold blooded killer of Americans ever to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Yes, I said it, the Reagan-Bush administration killed tens of thousands of gay Americans in cold blood to curry favor with the religious right of that day. And through it all was Larry Kramer and ACT-UP, doing whatever was possible to fight back and keep our communities from falling into the cracks, never to be seen or heard from again. Larry and the ACT-UP crusaders were much more successful at "crashing the gate" than Markos and Jerome, and they crashed that gate well before the internet was here to make the organizing and coordinating much easier. Before AIDS there were GLBT communities coalescing in what are today our gay Meccas, but with the onset of the pandemic, many of those communities rapidly shuttered their windows and hid. Until we managed to get minimal funding from Washington for medical research and additional funding for education, people thought HIV could be transmitted through saliva even. Persons with AIDS were being burned out of their homes and children hounded from schools because there was no understanding of how the virus was spread or contracted. Believe it or not, congress approved funding for AIDS education during the Reagan presidency but the White House with the blessing of Jessie Helms refused to allow it to be spent in GLBT communities because to do so would require mentioning how AIDS could be transmitted, through "sinful" activity. I vividly remember ACT-UP putting a enormous condom over Helms residence in DC in protest, to protect the nation from his hateful, murderous rhetoric.
Those activists brought our community from local activists fighting to keep their friends and neighbors alive, to national prominence and a seat at the table. ACT-UP activists not only influenced NIH policy on how to most efficiently battle the disease, but many of their techniques and strategies were adopted and implemented by federal and state agencies fighting the expanding pandemic. AIDS ultimately forged the GLBT into a community and into a political faction that is now crossed at a politician's peril.
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We have done several diaries dealing with HIV and AIDS. As we cover this topic again, several of the members will share their own personal stories of dealing with AIDS. These stories are from the older members of the group who have seen more than their fair share of all aspects of the epidemic.
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Being HIV- and dealing with AIDS-
submitted by refinish69
Dealing with AIDS has been a part of my life for over 30 years. As a gay male, I have watched my friends die almost as fast as I made them in the early days of the epidemic. Even worse were the ones who ran away or hid from friends because they did not want to share their pain or were ashamed because they believed the horrible things the religious nuts said about them.
I was sitting in an livingroom in Raleigh, NC and helped plan the very first World AIDS Day event to be held in conjunction with cities all across the world. I worked with all kinds of different groups to educate the gay Community about safe sex and distribute condoms to try and save as many lives as I could. I think we did some good but it was never enough. It still isn’t. We have people still being infected and having to live with AIDS.
The treatments have changed quite a bit over the years and the quality of life has become much better for those affected. This disease not only affects those with it but their friends and families. I remember having to explain to people that drinking or eating after someone would not expose them to the virus. I have spoken to gay, straight and bi groups to explain the dangers and misconceptions about AIDS. I have done more AIDS fund raisers than I can count. Everything from walks, bake sales, garage sales and dances. I have manned phone lines, stood outside bars and did surveys and handed out condoms, worn a gold safety pin and handed them out (an east coast thing that meant I only play safe), to doing presentations for high school kids when sex education was allowed.
I remember moving to San Francisco and hearing people finally speak openly about AIDS and not being ashamed or whispering so none would hear them. I saw the AIDS Quilt for the first time and even volunteered for them but had to move to another group since I cried each time a new panel arrived. I still cannot see the panels displayed without crying for the ones we have lost.
In San Francisco, I attended a support group for negative gay men dealing with AIDS and our society. When news of this support group hit the community, there was an uproar of anger. How could negative men need a support group? The people living with HIV and AIDS were the ones who needed support. What people did not realize was that the epidemic affected all segments of GLBT society. As a negative gay male, I had to come to terms with friends dying and the prospect of dating someone who was HIV+ and what that would mean. I came to terms with my fear of AIDS and the unknown and will be honest that I have dated more HIV+ men than I have HIV-. Status does not affect love. You fall in love because the person touches something in your heart and soul. My love for friends or lovers was never affected by HIV except learning to deal with their illness and being there through good and bad times.
The one thing that pisses me off the most about HIV and AIDS is that people are still being infected. The thought that infection rates are going up after working so hard to educate people is infuriating. The lack of comprehensive sex education and lack of caring in most communities (including the GLBT Community) with educating their own constantly astounds me. I can only assume that as treatments have extended life and quality of life the fear of AIDS has diminished. The current generation has never seen the true face of AIDS or experienced the full horror that most of us did in the early days. I will never forget the weekend when I was baking brownies for 10 memorial services. That was the day I refused to attend any more services unless it was a lover or someone who was in the inner circle of friends. I have continued to cook and take food to memorials but cannot attend them as I have been to too many in my lifetime. I have lost over 1,000 people I called friends and another 3,000 that I called acquaintances. No one who is 51 years old should be able to say that.
As mad and bitter as I may sound, I am still doing what I can to educate people in my own way. I still love and help those dealing with HIV and AIDS as much as I can. I share stories of those I have lost and how much they meant to me and shaped my life and how I don’t want to lose others.
How could I ever forget David Pendagrass who I had a major crush on until he became the brother I never had. His friendship allowed me to find my way in Gay society. No more lying or hiding but just enjoying who I was and my love for men. I had been out for years but never comfortable in gay settings.
Dan Pendagrass
How could I ever forget Keith McElheny who’s love of music, cooking, and reading matched my own? Keith was one of my best friends and my memories of joining Keith and his lover for holidays, brunches and shopping excursions will always be some of my fondest memories.
I will never forget Don Close who was my lover. We only had 5 ½ years together but they were the best and hardest years of my life. Our love was one of the ones that would have lasted for years and survived troubles that only a few couples can imagine or relate to. Hospital visits, anger, frustration, tears and quiet moments together and alone where each wondered what the hell life had handed them. Through all of this, our love sustained us as it was tested. I remember sitting on the floor beside the bed all night and placing cold compresses on Don’s forehead and begging him to let me take him to the emergency room. I also remember when Don asked me not to take any more pictures of him at events because he had lost so much weight, his hair had thinned so badly and his skin texture had changed. These were things I hardly ever noticed because I still saw the man I fell in love with.
Don Close
I will share a poem I wrote for Don the first time he got really sick.
A shift in lighting
Somber hues on otherwise brilliant gems
Tarnished edges
Spoil the setting
The beauty is still there
Rare and startling
Sparkling like new
Catching you unaware
Shift in lighting
The jewels in need of cleaning
Enamel chipped and missing
Such is life when death has entered
The uninvited roommate
Not wanted
Never welcome
But there nonetheless
The light fades again
Brightens-only to fade to black
Leaving memories of fleeting beauty...
Treasures lost
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It has been approximately 11 years since I first received the news that I was HIV(+). I waited a few years before going on the Meds since I did not have the Health Insurance needed to do so. In the ensuing years, post diagnosis, I've fallen to "AIDS" level twice due to the failure of those medicines. I hold out hope that the future holds a cure, or at least a vaccine that provides major containment of the virus. Half the medicines I take are related to the HIV condition and the other half are to battle the effects of my stroke. The Doctors advise that if I suffer another stroke I will either die or be rendered brain dead. The stroke condition is more likely to take me out than the HIV.
I have a Living Will in place and Christian (joustchr) has promised me that he will "pull the plug" in any eventuality of a vegetative state. I trust him to do this and know he understands and will respects my decision on this. I don't feel sorry for myself, I've lived a wonderful life. I feel badly for my spouse, my friends and my family who will have to have to endure my death. I've made peace with myself and can only hope in the near future that some form of Healthcare Reform will help my specific situation as well as that of many, many others in worse health and economic situations than mine. Severe Chronic Fatigue is one of my biggest hurdles now to having a productive and happy life.
My Cobra runs out next year. (Fingers crossed for HCR before then.)
Thanks to all my friends and family who have been incredibly supportive, and especially to Christian, as I know he won't have me around some day to b***h at him about all the unimportant BS that is part of our daily routines... LOL.
Oh BTW, Christian is HIV Negative and will remain so. When we had our first date I told him I was HIV Positive, I fully expected there to be no next "date". On the contrary he was fully accepting of me with my condition and we only practice Safe Sex to this day. I had experienced alot of rejections during my brief 9 months of being single, solely based on my HIV status. There is a great deal of discrimination within the Gay Community on this issue, which is truly sad.
I'll leave you with this quote which sums up how I feel at this late juncture in my life. When one comes close to death or ends up having a chronic deadly disease, at least in my case,... it tends to alter one's perception of the world and one's interactions with others in that world... Life is short and time is precious. I'll leave you with how I feel this ordeal has affected me:
"If you don't love yourself, you cannot love others. You will not be able to love others. If you have no compassion for yourself then you are not capable of developing compassion for others." -Dalai Lama
Compassionately submitted, Predictor (Ed).
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Tales of Terror-
The call came in at 3:30 a.m., an hour late enough that it hinted at emergency, even for one living in New York City.
"Antonio died and they won’t let me see him," Billy wailed across the night from his apartment in West Hollywood. "What am I going to do? What can I do?"
I had not heard from Billy or Antonio since they’d departed New York nearly a year earlier, Antonio having landed a position writing for a network sitcom. In their mid-twenties, their lives seemed carefree and joyous, a handsome, charming young couple exuding happiness and unbridled confidence.
For me, it was unfathomable that one of them was dead, and I immediately suspected it must have been a tragic car accident, the only conceivable explanation, unless somehow Antonio had fallen victim to some violent crime.
"We just thought he had the flu or something," Billy managed through sobs. "God, he can’t be dead. And why won’t they let me see him? I don’t know what to do."
Sadly, I had no immediate answers and as I learned more about the circumstances I grew even more confused. According to Billy, Antonio had not been feeling well, plagued by flu-like symptoms that would not go away. His physician in Los Angeles had prescribed some antibiotics, but they weren’t helping so Antonio decided to fly back to New York to see his family physician on Long Island. Three weeks later he was dead, a victim of what was then called pneumocystis carinii, a rare and deadly form of pneumonia.
This was in 1983. Yes, I’d heard about some new disease that was affecting gay men, but honestly, there hadn’t been much reporting on it in the main stream media which was still gripped with the epidemic of Herpes simplex. No one I knew had any information on this new "gay disease", first identified as GRID (Gay-Related Immune Difficiency), and it wouldn’t be until the following year that the HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) was identified.
For Billy, coping with Antonio’s death was beyond what anyone should have to endure. Antonio’s parents refused to keep Billy informed as to Antonio’s condition while hospitalized and refused to permit him to participate in any funeral or memorial services planned by the family. They blamed Billy for what they had learned was a disease caused by engaging in gay sex.
Not only that, but when he sought support from his gay landlord in West Hollywood, he was shocked by the response. His landlord told him he had to move, that he couldn’t have a different roommate than the one on the lease, which was Antonio, and there was no way Billy could afford the rent alone. Billy ultimately discovered that his landlord was afraid that the disease could be spread through casual contact and didn’t want Billy around.
Two weeks after receiving that late night call my partner and I had a new roommate. We assisted Billy in moving his belongings from California to a storage unit in Jersey City and welcomed him into our home until he could get settled elsewhere. Out of work, out of money, and emotionally devastated, Billy needed time and space, and my partner and I finally found him a one-bedroom apartment on West 48th Street that we leased for him, the rental payments made by us and by a wonderful older Jewish woman who’d long been our friend and wanted to help.
Now, in case you’re wondering why we didn’t allow Billy to remain in our apartment for a longer period of time, it was because three days after his arrival another friend of ours popped up unexpectedly needing a place to stay. He’d been evicted from his apartment for non-payment of rent, a circumstance that arose because of health problems that were preventing him from working.
We didn’t know that Robert had been ill, having over the years grown accustomed to his periodic absences as he ventured out to Fire Island or up to Provincetown for months at a time. Robert was an industrious performer, always managing to find six to eight months work each year singing chorus on Broadway, never shooting for stardom, but thrilled to be a part of the Great White Way and its generous pay and benefits scale. If he wasn’t on stage, he was entertaining the crowds in Manhattan’s lively cabaret scene.
Robert, too, had endured a bout of pneumocystis carnii and had somehow survived, but he was combating a host of other opportunistic infections as well as what had become known as the "gay cancer", Kaposi’s sarcoma. Broke, alone, and desperate, Robert had come to us, friends for over a decade, for help. We couldn’t refuse.
Robert remained with us for six months before being admitted to a hospice for care at his insistence. Three months later he was dead, this incredibly entertaining, gregarious creature who had brought so much joy and laughter into our lives.
Over the ensuing six years I drew lines through over 60 names of friends and acquaintances who succumbed to AIDS, including Billy’s and Robert’s. I stopped keeping track when my partner died in 1989.
Early on being diagnosed as HIV positive was a death sentence. When my partner and I were diagnosed in 1987, our physician told us to accept that we had 18-24 months to live, at most. Michael lasted 27 months. For some unknown reason, I’m still kicking around nearly 23 years later.
And please, don’t let anyone tell you that it’s easy living with AIDS, that all of these wonder drugs have made the disease a manageable nuisance. Yes, I’ve enjoyed some years of astounding productivity, but I’ve also endured a host of illnesses, surgeries, and ongoing side effects that have at times had me longing to join my deceased friends.
But as anyone who knows me will attest, I can be a bitch from hell, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow my octogenarian mother outlast me!
submitted by rontun.
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I first became involved in HIV/AIDS work before I ever knew anyone who was infected or who had died. My first involvement was in 1985 through the Shanti Project as an emotional/practical support volunteer. Interestingly enough, while I was an undergrad, I was a teaching assistant in the Biology lab for two and ½ years (a required course for pre-med students). The lab lecture both semesters of my senior year that I taught was about this new and emerging threat, AIDS.
Once in the Bay Area, AIDS became much more profoundly personal and real. One could not help but note that the Bay Area was hard hit by the epidemic. One could ignore it, certainly, but it took effort to make-believe it was not real.
Then October 1985 came around. And my world changed.
While in a demonstration in San Francisco regarding the US involvement in El Salvador (I was doing a little volunteer work with the Sanctuary Movement when not teaching), we were walking through UN Plaza towards the Federal Building when I encountered something that would forever change my perspective and politics and soul -- the ARC/AIDS Vigil.
In late October 1985, a group of homeless and nearly homeless gay men who had AIDS and ARC chained themselves to the doors of one of the buildings in UN Plaza in protest to the inaction of the US government in the face of the AIDS epidemic. It was the second act of civil disobedience ever in the history of the epidemic, the first having transpired a few months earlier with a gay man chaining himself to the doors of one of the federal buildings in similar protest only exception being that the first man was arrested while the men who set up the ARC/AIDS Vigil were not.
As our contingent of protesters marched through UN Plaza, past the Vigil, one of the men who was part of the group there stood up and cheered us on, clapping in solidarity. To reach across that divide by such a simple gesture, I was blown away.
By 1988 I was actively involved in AIDS, not only professionally, but as an activist, an advocate, but also as a person living with HIV disease.
Last year marked a significant milestone for me – in turning 46, which meant that I had been living with HIV for half of my entire life. Not adult life or professional life but rather half my entire life. This year, marks my 47th birthday and 24th year of living with HIV.
I am a very lucky man. I did AZT monotherapy. I did AZT plus ddC (what we used to call "combo" therapy. I now take the last possible combination therapy – having failed just about everything else out there o take (which I have written diaries on in the past). Why I am here I do not know. I have lost every friend – except one, my best friend -- that I knew when I first came out. Sometimes I walk around SF and feel a part of it, the other times I feel frighteningly apart from it.
To whom does one go to celebrate milestones when there is no one that knows your past?
submitted by dadanation.
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being another "elder statesman" (long term survivor) at age 48, this contribution didn't get written to be included this morning because writing is just too painful and one of the only coping mechanisms that works for me is to just plod forward every day to keep from sinking further into the pit of chronic, severe depression that is ever present...
i apologize, personally to tnich, and to the group, at large for my failure.
it's taken 2.5 hours to even muster the courage to dip my toe into this diary.
so, here goes.---
i live with aids every day.
fortunately, my health is relatively stable but, as you've read from others, that doesn't mean i feel "good". there's the chronic fatigue. the nausea that never goes away. the crazy fellini triple-feature dream sleep that is a side effect of sustiva, which i've "enjoyed" every night for the past 10 years or so since changing medications. (i stopped taking crixivan after the side effect of kidney stones rendered it more toxic than beneficial...those friends out there who have taken crixivan will know of what i'm speaking... the creaking, aching joints of an 84-year old in a 48-year old man's body.
...and then there is my dear, sweet (although there are days i could smother him with a pillow) partner of 16 years who suffers from heart problems and a recently diagnosed seizure disorder in addition to advanced hiv/aids. his health, sadly, is far worse than mine. i laughingly tell my friends and doctors that THE reason i stay healthy is that i don't have TIME to be sick...that caring for my partner is a 24/7x365 "job".
i don't know how much i'll be able to handle hanging around the diary...i'll do my best...AIDS is a lot like a horrible accident on the freeway; i know i shouldn't look but i instinctively put on the brakes and slow down to look at the carnage, hoping somehow, that it's worse than my own personal hell of daily life with aids.
i will say, that i believe my diagnosis on valentine's day (yeah, even God has a sense of humor) 1996, was one of the best days of my life. i'll close with the reason/s why.
i had been sick for months (if not years) and never wanted to face the reality. at the time, i weighed a whopping 108#'s and the first time my t-cells were tested, the results came back with ZERO t-cells. believing that to be an error on the lab's part, the doctor reordered the test and a whopping 2 t-cells were found. (i'm now in the high 400-low 500 hundred range with an undetectable viral load. that SHOULD be "good news" but if my long term disability private insurance ever saw that number, they would drop my coverage. they don't care about the symptoms or destroyed immune system, only the numbers that would justify cutting off my disability.)
the doctor gave me 30 days, TOPS. he suggested starting drug therapy, just in case. he said, "pray for a miracle, but prepare yourself and those you love for your death". to those who haven't been there, done that it may sound like he was being cold and callous. nothing could be further from the truth.
i lost my first partner to suicide in 1989, because he couldn't deal with the finality of an AIDS diagnosis. he was the first person i actually knew personally to be diagnosed with aids ("it" was big on the coasts, but we hadn't been touched in flyover land to the extent the rest of the country had been)...his parents and i spent a year on a "suicide vigil" before he finally figured a way to keep us at bay long enough to kill himself with carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage of our home. i knew something was wrong when i hit the garage door button and the smoke came billowing out.
from that day forward, i have been virtually emotionally dead. no amount of therapy has been able to remove the wall that i've put up around my heart. oh, there are chinks...chinks large enough to allow me to fall deeply, madly in love with my current partner. but the chinks aren't large enough to feel like a normal person. i don't cry when other people would normally cry. it takes breaking a favorite piece of crystal or some other non-breathing/feeling item to trigger the tears. that's the only emotional release i get.
i did some really stupid things, especially financially, in the immediate first year or two after diagnosis. i ruined my credit by running up HUGE credit card debt (i was very successful in fortune 5 <not 500>, which gave me access to tens of thousands of dollars of credit) that i didn't think i would live to repay. i viaticated my life insurance policy to keep a roof over our heads when my partner was diagnosed with aids. we eventually lost "the big house" and 1/2 of our farm but now live comfortably (albeit still hand-to-mouth and disability check to disability check).
i haven't a lot more to add...but i am going to close with why i view my diagnosis as a blessing and not a curse. hopefully, this will help my atheist and agnostic friends to understand the passion i have for my personal faith a little better (and i hope you will have the respect to NOT say anything derogatory or snide because i really have lain my soul completely bare...something i promised myself i would never do after the maelstrom of controversy recently in our little "off group" group.)
i am here today because God's not finished with me yet.
there's no rational explanation why i would survive the first thirty days, much less live to the point where i can thrive. i'm not here (or anywhere else, for that matter) to ram my personal beliefs down anyone's throats. in fact, it usually takes an attack on anything faith-based for me to chime in because it is so personal.
my beliefs are just that...mine. that said, those beliefs that i was raised with and that i completely denied and walked away from because i couldn't reconcile the atrocities committed by some organized religions on me personally and our community-at-large with the teachings of Jesus are what keep me moving forward. those strong beliefs have also given me a modicum of clarity for my life's "purpose". you see, i'm just as fierce an advocate for our glbt community in my faith-based world as i am an advocate for my faith-based life in the glbt community. the two are intrinsically, completely intertwined in my life. my Church and all of my spiritual friends have gained a whole new level of knowledge and respect for us as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered human beings through my decision to live my life completely open and honest. hopefully, my glbt friends will also (with time) come to have that same level of respect for people of faith. yes, there are bigots and horrible people that do horrible things in the name of religion. that doesn't make them any more Christian than a flower pot in a garage makes it a car. please, if you take nothing else away from this, understand that those who commit atrocities in the name of religion are despicable...but it's shallow and misplaced to cast blame on the whole faith-based community.
as glbt people, for goodness' sake, WE (of all people) should be hyper sensitive and aware of generalizations.
peace.
contributed by liberaldemdave.
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I neglected to remember drchelo in this diary. drchelo was an angel to the HIV/AIDS community and passed away a year ago from her own battle with terminal illness. She was on the frontlines with us battling the medical establishment and the homophobes from the very beginning. She had promised to participate in this diary when I asked those many long months ago. I'm deeply sorry you were taken from us and never able to share those memories with us. You were a kind, loving soul just when we most needed you. RIP dear friend.
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Have you signed our petition to encourage the World Cup organizers to honor Eudy Simelane and all of the South African women who have suffered "corrective rape" at the hands of homophobic thugs? The 2010 FIFA World Cup is being held in South Africa and Eudy was raped and murdered in part for her love of the game of soccer/football and in part for her living an open life as a lesbian. We're only at 131 signers to date. PLEASE take a second and add your voice!
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Each week between now and the end of March we will add a poll to the end of each diary for you to select your favorite GLBT candidate or ally running for office. The five winners will be added to our ActBlue fundraising page. The leaders each week will be removed from further polling and guaranteed a spot on our page. The first week NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was chosen with 33 out of a total of 78 votes. The second week Senator Barbara Boxer of California was selected with 13 of 52 votes. Last week we selected Ted Ankrum for Representative with 16 of 44 votes cast. If you have preferred candidates not seen on the lists, suggest them in the discussion below and we'll add them at a future date. Not only will we consider GLBT friendly candidates but also folks running to replace established homophobes. Next week we will run our final poll on this and include all the candidates suggested but not selected to date and any others folks wish us to add to the list. So please get back to me with any suggestions you haven't seen listed here so far. We are considering candidates for national office only. And if any of those selected in these polls end up in easy reelection bids, we will remove them from our ActBlue fundraising page so we can focus our efforts where they will make the greatest impact. Thanks.