changing subject

I have been meaning to write for a few days but it was the weekend. It's much easier to write when you do it every day, like excercise, because you lose the inertia. On the other hand, taking a step backwards gives more of a bird's eye view.

I saw the psychologist again. It was very different this time. I told him how sick I got last time, and we discussed many things. I told him that even so, the last meeting had a positive impact, because I stoppped smoking. But then, in the last 2 days I did smoke a couple of cigarettes. Anyway it was less about the fags and more about the state of mind that allowed me to re-prioritize. I realized that as much as I do honestly want to go to Xxxx I have to put that now on hold, because that country won't admit me, won't acknowledge my existence as a poz, and I am not ready to face up to that. Maybe sometime in the future. So with all due respect to international cooperation, I choose to hang in the sidelines now. I am just too wounded, and my mind draws a panicky plank whenever I think of going. I might feel differently in the future. So I am looking at alternatives. I recruited B. in Thailand, who almost made me cry. I am in the process of recruiting a collegue. These two are not a substitute for the real thing but a backup and something I can do in the meantime, until and if I get more stable on my feet.

The bottom line of my meeting with the psychologist was that I need stability now. Something which stuck with me, which he had already mentioned in the first meeting, was that HIV is about maintanence and management (actually he said "risk reduction"). And one of the highest risks, I guess, is stress. And in order to determine which amount of stress is reasonable and productive and which amount is excessive and distablizing I can only consult with myself, and my intuition about Xxxx is fear. In fact, as nervous as I was about going to Thailand I am much more about Xxxx. Though I know that when/if I go there everything will work out perfectly fine.

In less than a month, I will be with P.'s family in the South of Europe, so strange to imagine. It is not as cold here as it should be this time of year. This is the warmest automn ever, and the second-warmest was last year. So I don't have the overwhelming feeling of loss that winter always brings. But then again summer, and spring in particular, always makes me much more nervous. First because of all the strategies I have to apply to hide my scars and tatooes, secondly because summer = Israel and Israel is a place that makes me intensly uncomfortable, and which I will have no way of avoiding. Even B. had to be reunited with his old father in Bangkok last week after several years of non-contact. B. and I are like cats, we have to crawl in some bushes and lick our wounds, maybe even die, where no one will find us.

A teriffying serial rapist escaped in Israel, and I am so glad I don't have to be there, living alone in the middle of Tel Aviv. And I saw the most stomach churning, scary, sad, horrifying documentary on TV last night, Darwin's Nightmare (http://www.darwinsnightmare.com/). I didn't watch all of it, because P. and I had just finished making love and were about to have dinner, but the glimpses that I saw were just haunting. But as the psychologist said, there are some things which we can control, and some things which we can't (the weather, wars, politics, other people, our health). Yet we still tend to worry just as much, or more, about the things which are out of our control. Then we talked some about why I turned out like that, not in an analytical (we don't meet frequently enough) but more in a conversational way, and he showed me a picture of a little girl he is in charge of, and looked like he was about to cry. I should have asked if that was his granddaughter, I guess it was obvious that she wasn't. But I clammed up as I do in these situations. Death and loss make me change subject always.