Eleven years….

Wow! Eleven years come and go as of today; a pin prick of a needle, eyes fluttering, not being able to breathe, comas, months in the hospital and then years of recovery. There have been many changes in my life.

I won’t say it’s been easy. I’m still living with HIV and, even though I know there will be a cure in my lifetime, I will continue to live with it till then. I won’t say that I didn’t have a ‘melt down’ this past Sunday either with everything on my mind and knowing that it’s eleven years. I have been emotional and aloof for the past week up until I broke down. Two people that I love, care for, respect, adore and hold close to my heart tighter than they can ever know, reminded me that I’m loved though.

One, not knowing exactly what was wrong with me, in a simple act of giving me a miniature rose, made all the difference in my world Sunday night.

Those few words, “I don’t know what is wrong but I thought of you when I saw this…”

I think if I hadn’t had to help finish cooking I would have run upstairs and broke down crying even more; all happy tears.

I think that my path in my diagnosis probably has made me more emotional. I sit here this morning and I’m teary as I type this but I’m filled with an emotion that I don’t think I felt last year: HOPE!

Hope… and peace.

However, I have a though on dealing with what I deal with on a daily basis. This might be annoying, blasphemous, morbid or repulsive to some but in reality it feels like I’m been mourning the ‘death’ of something.

I’ve been mourning the ‘death of my past life’ prior to my diagnosis.

With the passage of time, as you mourn the passage of a loved one, the pain of ‘losing that person’ slowly ebbs. I guess that is what has been happening to me slowly each year as time passes. I remember the past, my past and mourn but the pain of it all slowly ceases to affect/effect me.

Like a person that has lost a loved one, I still ‘hold on’ to the loss. At the same time, like the grief process and ‘holding’ on to that loss, the pain of the loss makes me forge ahead and continue to carry on with my life. I’ve lost a loved one. I’ve lost the person I was and now deal with the person I am.

The person I am now has to deal with continuing ‘his’ life and continuing to grow, live, love, hope, dream and yearn for a person to love me relationship wise. Just like someone who has lost a loved one, I have to go on. That, in itself, can be hard but it is part of life, part of living and parts of what makes us who we are: Human.