NotPerfectAtAll

Hollier than thou

2009-05-14T21:52:00.000-07:00

The old man shuffled under the gilded layered robes, his face clenched as he went entered the room. They were waiting, ready to take him around, wanting something, a Word, some Guidance. It was another attestation to His greatness, His mysterious ways, his infinite kindness and wisdom. And it was Work.

Work needed to be done, because people were watching, and they needed to learn. His job was to shepherd them. He has been given the light, the sword, the kingdom, he was clutching to it, although he knew it could never be taken. Not while he was alive.

But there was infinity to prove. The world was unimaginably different than even 10 years ago. There were forces. Demons. They gnawed their way into sites of uttermost holiness, and swarmed like locust, they were unabashed by gold, by gilt, by axiom. They wanted things he could not give, and his stance was fierce. Relentless. They wanted his thoughts, his pronunciations, on the unthinkable. They clawed and ravaged into his past, bringing up hazy days when he could not yet settle into the orderly, painstaking, meticulous, immaculate path, a path marked and planned and placed in front of him and only him so he could be where he was now. Closer to the throne than anyone walking the earth. An Intermediate.

In those days which were a lifetime away but sometimes, with his burgeoning age laying on him like an invisible cloak heavier than his most ceremonious robes, so close that he could smell and see them, miss their simplicity and dread their chaos, their awfulness, he had been awash, along with the masses, a helpless young body in a sea of bodies. He had made choices made by millions. And he would not be crucified for them. He had done nothing wrong, and he did not care for any implications otherwise. Had something been done, he would not have been brought so close, to such power. It was a simple truth. Once he had given his life away, and given into the wondrous machinery of the organization, he was carried upwards in a stream of light, through the rumors and the backstabbing, through corruption and scandal, through heartlessness (for their were many who would murder, and have, to be where he was), in a series of ongoing miracles that proved over and over and over, that he was the one, and that any mistake, any sin, was long forgotten and forgiven.

He believed so passionately, so intimately, like a baby in its mother's arms, seeing only her face, that circle of light. He made it so there was nothing else and there would never be, and for that he was rewarded. And he had made promises, made vows as he lay under the canopy, in these fits of sleeplessness that sometimes seized him, when calling for the doctor and having a tablet discreetly placed by his bedside was impossible, so close to the last time he had called, that the whispers, the phone calls, the electronic messages! would start before the doctor even made it back downstairs. In those torturous nights, he knew he had to face a grave challenge the next day meeting one leader or another and proclaiming once more the eternal power that seeped so endlessly, so painfully, so lethally out of the holly body placed in his shaking, eternally grateful hands. It was too much then and his mind would drift back to simpler times, to childhood games, to an innocent, harmless libido. The uniforms just enforced that innocence. He had been in uniform his whole life, but the first one he put on was supposed to haunt him, get him in trouble with those salivating, wild eyed journalists he imagined (though never actually seen, as the news was filtered to him via a hierarchical network of media advisers) how they rejoiced. The words they said. German words pronounced wrong, in grave mockery, to humiliate not only him personally, but He who was sustaining them, He who could at mere passing with turn them into ashes, He who could, and no doubt would, show them his humble face, his warm, bleeding heart, again and again and again a million times over, until their last breath. And only then turn to wrath, impersonal and practical. And they were fools. Blind and dumb. He knew that appeasement should not take place on the last breath alone, knew it in his heart when he begun serving.

He had no choice whatsoever in donning that uniform on his lank, boyish body. A body of a child who sprouted suddenly into a man, knees bumping against each other, insecure in his shorts but confident under the heavy cloth when marching in time to that wonderful music. He did not wish to, but he compiled because Papa was made happy, Mama beamed with pride, their teachers were vehement they go serve, the women, girls and little boys looked at them in admiration, almost ecstasy. There was never a choice, that's what they don't understand.

It was a war and people were killed, but he had nothing to do with that, he just put on the uniform. It was not right. It was wrong. And his country was devastated. Tragically, punishingly, as it should have been for its hubris, its foolishness. But so many lives lost... some of them Jews, of course. Killed, murdered, what does it matter. The look on the rabbi's face, he had forgotten his name, so many to be met each day, when he had said killed. He could almost take it back, but remembered that mildness needs to be affected, for the millions watching who do not care for the Jews. For his own people who have heart enough, enough about those 6 million or so, probably less, when each second more babies are murdered, unborn. They are not given any chance to hear the truth, to cross the threshold, to stand in the light with the just and the mighty. Infidels had the chance of correction and forsake it. Their organizations were strong and very few had the courage to break away towards the light. They were doomed to start with. But an unborn baby, a glob of semen with millions of them dropped carelessly into a ceramic sink (flash of distanced days when he had not yet vowed, cowering in the shared bathroom), what choice did it have when it was murdered before forming, building up its cells and heart and lungs so it could become a disciple if all things converged and the slight, incredible, unquantifiable miracle of turning a believer was made? And now everywhere, at this very second, trillions of murdered, unborn babies in places where babies were usually born in scores, where the immense power he was guiding made relentless progress and was never dismissed or ridiculed, were wasted away like bowel movements because of the idea that men and women should be carnal away from the blessing of marriage, away from his guiding presence, and being encouraged to do so by their governments, by health organizations, by their schools! And he knew that even some of his footmen, who had seen the sick and dying and chose to advocate the tool of the devil, being wrong, being misled, being blinded the ultimate test placed in his shaking hands, guarding the doors from the flood of infidels ready to ravage the Kingdom, bring the world into darkness, extinction (for hadn't he spoken very strongly in favor of environmental issues, conceding that pollution is a sin).

He was forced to issue a statement, a statement he somehow doubted when hearing from the experts, but then he heard so many statements, endless streams of facts and figures. Nevertheless it was the only thing he could think of at the time that would ward off the evil, if only until he composed himself, until he received further guidance. His advisers were against it, but they were not of strong character and has not seen the things he have, endured the tests he did. He spoke to the world. He told his flock, the innocents crowding under the warmth of his hand, as well as the poor, doomed souls fornicating extra-maritally, the condoms prevent pregnancy, but do not prevent transmittance of a certain disease.

The Leap

2008-12-07T03:10:00.000-08:00

Out of anger and resentment comes redemption. Out of jealously and bitterness comes acceptance. Out of chaos comes peace. But only if you believe. And that nonaction is a struggle that has to be repeated daily like a mantra and a chore. I have always been lax at daily maintenance whether my own, embarrassing to say but even hygiene, or that of my surroundings. It's safe to say there is at most a 50-50% chance of me doing something when I say that I will do it. I do however try to keep my promises and appointments which is why I find it so hard to commit, even return calls and uphold contacts, and why I am fundamentally lonely. Like my personal life my habitats have always reeked of false starts and uncompleted tasks. I no longer expect myself to have the stamina or endurance and have resigned to a lifetime of cyclical transitions between energy and sedation, kindness and pettiness, warmth and irritation. I wish I was different, I wish I wasn't burdened with myself. I can say that I don't like myself. I never have, and probably never will. But I don't like other either. To be able to like others they must open up to you and let you see how they really are and very few people have let me do that. I mean, that sounds as though I'd want to dig deep into their soul, that isn't the case, I just want them to be there long enough, so I can get accustomed to their presence. But invariably, when someone is as close as my husband, they get hurt, and they see my awkward, unstable ways, my fits of uncensored anger at things beyond my control and outside my realm of existence, and my illogical, often paranoid thinking. Can someone be as close to me as he is and bear it? Will he one day wake up and realized that using a condom indefinitely was the least of his compromises in this relationship? Would I be with me, live with me, the way I am? I doubt it. If only for the fact that I would seek someone less self-doubting, and far less scarred than myself. Thank God he is so uncomplicated, and though he may occasionally get hurt, he doesn't bear a grudge or analyze me the way I do myself and the way I judge my surroundings, so harshly, as though the worst case scenario was the most probable one.

Bare necessities

2008-11-29T00:51:00.000-08:00

Ron asked me, in a yet-unanswered email, if I have been doing any writing. The truth is that asides from the last posts and a couple archived ones that I published, I have been self destructing. When I speak about self destruction these days, it no longer involves punctured skin or chemicals or painful sex, but it still invariably involves the self loathing that would set these off, the anger, the idling, the panic, the stress, the fatigue, the despair, the gritted teeth and shallow breath and strained muscles, and of course, the eating. I wouldn’t call it binging because I have binged in the past and I know it doesn’t get nearly as far these days, but it is definitely stressful emotional eating. Strange that this is the acceptable term, since I do not feel emotional at all when eating like that. If anything it crystallizes my lack of emotion, as soon as I eat, a vacuous monotony replaces these hints of fear and dread, as though I had hurriedly swallowed a prescription painkiller when hints of thunderous pain flashed on the distant horizon. It is not the pain I am conditioned to numb, fear but the hint of it. Someone has been shitting on our stairs. This weekend, implausibly, on the stairs themselves, a stinky soufflé of human manure. Last night, at the entrance to our house, a smaller, not so distinctly human pile, except there has been a lingering smell of urine by our door for months now. Last winter, I opened the door one day, late for work, and nearly stepped on a shadow of a female addict who was messing around with her sleeve in that tiny filthy space. You’d think that being treated for HIV I’d run into junkies all the time, but I have never seen any obvious IV drug user at the clinic. There are a lot in town though. Usually asking for change or telling you the age-old, universal story of trains and wallets. Some of them still look pretty good, especially the women can be made up and everything, but the eyes and faces give them away, at least to me. And the walk, of course, I can tell a junkie from a distance just from that walk. That time, I slammed the door without saying anything, and a few minutes later she was gone. Whoever is shitting here, I woke up in the freezing bedroom at 6.00 and the fumes of dark gray anger, resentment and desperation settled all around me, on the bloody leak in the wall that hasn’t been fixed since august and has been seen by who knows how many renovation, building and plumbing specialists without any of them actually solving the damn thing, because the owner is too cheap to do anything but emergency dam fingering. And with all these guys meeting and discussing and being paid by the hour, I’m the one sleeping with dirty freezing water dripping into a plastic tub in my room, for weeks on end. On the shit that will no doubt appear again when we least expect it. On the extension of my contract that I have been promised ages ago and heard nothing about. On the salaries that were change and the unresolved tax blunder that ensues and my debts that accumulated into more than 10,000 Euro. On my total lack of social right, on the distance and the inflating flight prices and my infertility and my RSI and my work with those people that take care of themselves and politely and warmly ignore everyone else, on the recession and the crisis and the inescapable unemployment, on the aging of my parents, on the escapism of my brother, on the fact the no one cares or wants to do anything and everyone’s out to save their own ass, self very much included, on my impotence as well as my infertility, on the godawfulhelplessness of it all, and of course, how can I forget, my self inflicted scars and scabs and marks and tatts, HIV not withstanding, though I don’t have a bloody fucking clue how I got it. Not that it matters. My life is good even without HIV, it’s the fears and the shit of others that occasionally threaten to destroy it. The other day I was watching TV when I saw a face that I have only seen once in the past before, but I recognized it immediately. When I saw her, she was standing behind me at a supermarket queue, and I had to restrain myself from openly staring at her. But I guess I did anyway, it was impossible not to (though the Dutch being Dutch, they were going obliviously about their business as though this blinding sight was not in the room, like an android sent to us from another planet where the life forms have been perfected to the essence of human characteristics that will call beauty. And I mean, this country is full of beautiful girls, as are other countries, but I can’t remember anyone taking my breath like this. She was just sunburned a wild haired and wearing some denim miniskirt on her long tanned legs, and she didn’t give off the showy air that a lot of pretty girls do, although what would I know anyway, we are only interested in great beauty or deformity that catches our eye, that we hope not or dare not imagine occupying. Then I saw her on TV and they said who she was. Her life wasn’t glamorous, and becoming Holland’s Next Top Model just kicked up more dirt. The show host, one of these soft-spoken, pseudo-therapist but still rugged and adventurous types they love here was intensely nodding and gazing while he interviewed her about the escort business. He also gave her the initiation ceremony all minor celebrities have to undergo here, visiting some orphanage or children’s clinic in a developed country and taking lots of smiling photos while playing a few games with the kids, and I often wonder if it is always the tough kids that push to the front and the frame in these situations, just like the benefactor who has ejected themselves to stand out from the masses and invade our attention span, grabbing our attention even more on the background of the dark small faces we can’t and won’t tell apart. Do they bother learning their names in the short time they spend dropping by? And those orphaned and abandoned, who have used out any spare luck just getting into a dingy buidling with rows of cots and handdowns from children who get their clothes new and their toys shiny, do they have any inkling that the big, brazen visitors are just as starved for love as they are?

Let's call it home

2008-11-18T08:58:00.001-08:00

I come home and I dont take off my coat because its too cold indoors. I rub my chin and feel the tiny coarse hairs I have to tweeze every day now, and I wonder about my hormones. I will find out this month if I have entered early menopause or not and if that is the reason that more than a year's worth of syringes sperm-filled hasn't gotten me pregnant. I mean, maybe I am optimistic, maybe it will take more than a month to find out. I am not trying tp find out everything I can about this, I have spent too much time in skeptic, concerned, frentic HIV research mode to dive into fertility mode, I know I need to be informed, but not just yet.

Anyway, I dont really want to be pregnant. I mean, I do want it, but I don't really want it, not with my salary as low as it is and my contract about to expire, not with this crisis, not with the shitty rental property market and this cold apartment, not with my rusty bike as a vehicle, and especially not without any sort of social or employment benefits whatsoever here in the Netherlands (or anywhere else for that matter), maternity leave notwithstanding. I do want to have an adorable baby who will sit in a sud-filled bucket, gurgling. But I am not even sure a baby not old enough to speak can sit in a bucket without hurting himself. I don't know much about babies at all, maybe because since I had the abortion (and before that) I had never concieved of my ever having a baby as a plausible thing. I knew I didn't have it together enough to be a single mom, and the family way seemed unlikely, even pre-HIV. It was just a heartwarming picture that I saw online, and the baby was Ugandan, so there was no choice really but washing him in a bucket. And the article said that "down there" people don't have soap, so they usually rub their skin with stones in whatever body of water they have access to.

Im thinking of Africa a lot these days, not only but mostly because of my friend in Zimbabwe and the horror that trickles out of there. Everytime I worry about anything in my own life, I think of hospitals with handwritten notices telling visitors not to leave their corpses of their relatives on the premises, and rusty cots serving only as gurneys transporting the living dead from the hut or the shed or the street itself to a hole in the ground. I think of gaping storerooms and corridors devoid of any doctors, and of people avoiding embraces in the funerals, because of the plague. This time this plague is cholera, but the plague is anything that makes humans so greedy and mad that they would trample others for profit, and each time it manifests in something else. HIV is part of it, but HIV is not it, as far as I can tell. A grandmother feeding cow feces to starving grandchildren and causing them to die, that's a manifestation of the plague as much as any bateria. Not only in Africa. Everywhere we see it. In Chinese children sleeping on piles of denim while their mothers are smothered daily, nightly by chemicals used to give denim that used, "worked in" look, tearing behind improvised denim surgical masks and the air buzzing of trillions of tiny jean-blue particles, that's a symptom. I am probably wearing something made like that right now, but I won't again. I'm not going to do something that I know is bad, ever again, not if I can help it. Not until I have a child and forget my priorities in an urgent haze of need and love.

***
I should write something about the wedding. Those were a wonderful two weeks, I was a nervous wreck but it was worth every sleepless night and pinched nerve and stress headache, of which there were plenty, maybe tomorrow I'll be able to write about it. I shouldn't keep mixing the bliss and the horror like this, but this is how it happens inside this one person, anyways. It will take me some time to find my married voice I guess. Its pretty cozy here though. Not enough for a baby, but good enough for me, by far.

Lovable, affordable

2008-08-19T23:57:00.000-07:00

It's a sparkling automn day here in the lowlands, golden sunlight is seeping through the white curtains, and the air will be fresh and crisp when I emerge from the cluttered yet cozy apartment and let my well worn sneakers beat on the dappled pavements. Then I will rush home, it will be already after 10.00, and hope in the shower, ignoring the water that rises above the clogged drain, towel myself dry and rush out on my rusty little bike to work. I'll be sitting alone in my room with a nunch of papers, typing away, waiting for a text message from my brother, who is hopping on the Eurostar to come see me after more than a year in which we haven't met. P. will work until 17.00, and I will leave work and go home to some schedueled sex. After that I'll start cleaning and preparing the place for my brother, and P. will go to the supermarket. We might wait for my brother or start dinner ourselves, and if we do that we'll watch Little Britain on DVD because the antena's broke and we can't watch the olypmics.

At some point in the day, there will probabaly be some rain, even a heavy shower. I'll also have to call the tax office and speak my poor, halted Dutch with them. I'll try to register for another Dutch course, they are beginning in a couple of weeks, hoping that this one will finally take me to a level of comfort. I'll have to bug our estate agent to bog to plumber who is long over due to fix a leak on the roof that makes the bedroom smell like old laundry. I'd probably have to sort out some other things as well; we're trying to get better housing and I need to fill out some forms for which I don't have all the information, which is hiding in scattered letters here and at work.

I probably won't run into my boss today. If I see him it's rarely unscheduled and usually no more than once a fortnight. But if I do, he'll be really nice, like everyone I meet at work.

In Zimbabwe, my friend will struggle to feed herself and to maintain her job under a tryant, explosive employer. Under the constant flap of his threatening wings, she may or may not think of the much darker presents the permeats the entire country like a thick toxic smog crawling close to the ground, suffocating the lower strata first before rising to the middle and upper crusts. Deducing characters from features is primitive and prejudiced, but Mugabe's face is a clichéd typecast of the powerdrunk, deranged dictator. There is nothing behind those beady eyes but greed and hate, so much so that the Hitler mustache is entirely redundant to the role.

Later that day, my friend will scramble for any spare change left over from her meager salary, after spending almost all of it on outrageously overpriced, cheaply produced, unnourishing food, extortionist shared taxi fare to work, and unrealistic rent for a mildewed cement box with a festering communal shithole behind it. A real shit hole, not what I used to refer to back when I couldn't find half decent accomodation here. Whatever is left over, she will send to her family, half of which is diagnosed with AIDS.

I tell myself that I can't send money again. I don't have any social security here, my salary is close to a minimum, flight fares have risen by 50% and almost everything else has inflated as well. I need to save for the future, and the fact that I can save anything is notable in itself. I have helped B with his surgery, and have sent her a nice round sum before, much higher than even I expected, except what is the point of helping if you don't do enough, if you hold back. But it's gone, of course it's gone. She is not the type to keep it to herself. But I can't carry them all on my shoulders. I can't. I donate spare meds, I get spare meds and rip off my insurance (insofar as insurances can be ripped off which is as trivial as a flee bite on a mamoth) precisely so I can donate them, at least now I do, because before I was saving for an uncertain future. And it's still pretty uncertain. I need that money. But people are dying. But I walk on the light side. There are millions upon millions upon millions under me. I walk upon them, floating on their convulsing bodies. They help me float, they help this whole continent to float, and on some tiny corner of it, I suckle to sustain myself, my love, my relationships, my modest successes, my health, my well being, my parents, whose well-being can feed on that of my own, finally. I nourish myself, and someone is dying. Millions are. But someone that I know is, someone I wrote words to. Exchanges confidences with. And how can I celebrate when that happens. But how much is enough, how much will keep a finger in the dam, how much will enable me to open up my heart to happiness, and live with it. How much is bullshit, words that should not be spoken or written but turned into deeds, into money orders, into hard tangible currency. Can you love someone, and not afford to help them, or are you lying to yourself so you can love yourself, so you can let yourself be someone who is lovable?

I put my sneakers on.

Blessed and torn

2008-07-10T12:58:00.001-07:00

P is away planning a wedding. It's going to be huge. Well not as far as weddings go but as far as I ever imagined. I am here trying to hold on, exasperated with the oblivious, well intentioned people that surround me, resentful towards those that do want something, apologizing profusely whenever I suspect that my unkindness unveiled. At the moment, I am wedged on a precipice of superstition, terrified of jinxing myself, restless, shifty as though I was going something wrong, committing a crime instead of sanctifying a bond. Ashamed as the con that I am.

Jogging through the rain soaked park in the last rays of overdue sunshine, I am so slow and stiff that I imagine someone mocking my girly run. Slow enough to observe signs of premature fall manifesting the accelerated random shuffle of seasons that global warming brought to these parts. Some plants are in full bloom while other are already shutting down into yellowing and rot. Maybe it was always that way, but everything seems threateningly off-key, a premonition.
The flock of geese that dominates the North end of the park have settled down for the night, configured in a teardrop formation in the lake's middle, well away from the banks. Maybe one of them is on nightwatch, looking out for its sleeping brethern for a proverbial fox or weasel.

P wants a big village wedding, maybe to please his family, or maybe his friends and wider relative circle. Although, when I burst into a fluster of high-pitched, teary eyed fatigue tantrum, he says having a proper celebration doesn't really matter. But I know it does, else he wouldn't have initiated it. And it will cost a lot, though I imagine we'll reimburse a good part of it would still entail a couple thousand Euros gone at best. But it doesn't matter, so long as we are welded together like that with his community, the community I stay away from 6 months a year lest they notice one of the marks that brands me, and can smile sweetly and freely at in the second half of the year.

I wonder what a heartwarming fowl formation would do to a sick member. Would they eject it to sleep by itself among the reeds, or would they peck it to death like chickens do to old hens, or would they keep it underneath the surface until its feeble struggle stopped, or would they, in any likelihood, take care of it? How primitive is the instinct of exile, how embedded. How much of it can we hope to conquer. I know I am a loser because I don't fight it at all, I do not confront, I still to the obscurity that this rural yet inernational life afforded me.

I think of B lying on a thin dirty matress in his asbestos roofed shack, recovering from stomach surgery. I sent him money two more times, and shut him off, not replying, because I don't want to be there for the next time. I don't want to be there when he dies. And I think how by sealing my fate with P, my destiny, I commit not just to my own exile, but to my parents' future abandonment. Don't let anybody say I overlooked it. I am heartless, but broken hearted. I want to cancel it all and run away and vomit and die, because I know it is going to happen. But I don't have a choice except doing the most wretched, and wonderful, thing, designed to bring a shade of security into this random life. I don't need it to confirm love, nothing will make my love for P any stronger, it is amplified to the max, I think. But I need it for the same reasons everyone needs it, dry, practical, and yet I see, even as I schedule dressmaking and consult airline web pages, that it won't bring the wholeness and tranquility that I have been missing my entire life, but will deepen the bleeding rift between who I was and who I am, and what and who are left behind. I need someone to stitch it up for me, because I just can't reconcile my love and happiness with this unspeakable dread, but all I do is instruct a woman, a more capable, resilient, worthy immigrant that I will ever be, to stitch fabric in a protective form around me. I will be camouflaged, blooming briefly and belatedly, blessed, torn.

Foreign affairs

2008-06-26T01:57:00.000-07:00

I stay home, not because I planned to. I have work to do, that ain't new. Have to finish something so I will have something to say somewhere, and they want to know what it is I am going to say upfront. Speaking and writing are different, and I feel a hollow dread trying to fill the void between 15 frontal minutes and 5,000 backstage words. I falter, drinking coffee after coffee, wandering the net, burning time as I have been apt to lately, and here is half 2008 and I am 4 posts poor. I guess misery and loneliness really do feed creation. There is a topic that I have been wanting to write about here at least for a couple of months but every time I think I grabbed it, it escapes me. I let go of it and go the the bathroom, ignoring the filthy floors, the hairballs, everything that I tell myself I'd take care of once P gets on that plane tomorrow and goes home for the month. I have just finished given myself an amateur pedicure, and I plan to slather a self-tanning lotion on my pasty white legs. I hate looking in the mirror nowadays, seeing the hollows in my face, the traces of blue veins around my eyes and forehead, the start of a double chin. I can escape the mirror, but not my hands, which are always in front of me. Three tendons stick out like an underlining tree in each hand, thick veins underlie the skin like highways, and maybe worse of all, because I have never glimpsed it before getting on the PIs, is the distinct hollow between my hand and my wrist bone. It makes me feel frail and a little sick to look at my hands, and I avoid my face at all, unless I am applying makeup, which I have been using more lately that I am used to, trying to even it all out and create a semblance of warm, wholesome puffiness from the gauntness. Anyway, I put Vaseline on my elbows, knees, toes and around the edges of the soles of my feet. Then I rub Vaseline on my palms. You should always do that if you're applying self-tanner, otherwise you'll end up with spots and patches in the rougher areas. I pick up the Shiseido bottle I bought at the airport in my year of diagnosis. I haven't used it much, because after all the weather here doesn't permit you to show your skin much (the lesser the better, from my vantage). I start rubbing the translucent, luxurious stuff into my skin, first into my legs, blinking irritably at the new vein marks, then into my collar bone, shoulders (not that anyone'd get to see my shoulders) and arms. In Japan, I used to spend long lonely weekend hours in department stores, putting on all kinds of lotions and covers. Japanese women consider skin pores to be as repugnant as a bushy bikini line is considered in the West. I never was tempted to buy their cosmetics, I knew I didn't have it in me to even try for the crystalline purity that is an urban young Japanese female. I well knew I was a lesser, clumsier, bruised and dented being, but I was adept at smoothing my flows and polishing my stains to make myself acceptable. As I apply the self tan I see myself in the mirror: when my head is poised downwards, I can see the future creases around my lips. They straighten out when my head is straight, but are clearly visible when I bend down and look sideways at my reflection. I wonder if, when I go to Mexico one day to fill up my hollowed face, I'd get rid of a few wrinkles as a bonus. The horrors of a mysterious matter conglomerating and hardening under one's skin. I shudder. My legs though, are as dimpled and soft as a baby's from the knees up. My underarms sway gently under the crude tats on my shoulders, my cleavage is slightly creased. Topping it all, a scrawny, pointy face peeks at my with worried, rounded eyes like an animated chicken's. I walk away from the ghost train that is my image, and back into my life.

***

A hot Saturday evening on a back from Rotterdam, picking up generic beats and provocative words on my Sony Ericsson's radio, flat landscape flowing past, a food factory with trucks parked into dozens of ports like suckling piglets, my thoughts whizzing in and out of old debts, scars, newer freshly picked scabs. A desperate text message from Copenhagen, a near-death in Thailand, mounting fear in Zimbabwe, deprivation in America. I'm in all those places, but I am still the chubby, helpless woman watching young longhaired white girls in jeans that manage to be droopy and skinny at once and allow their satin tiger print undies to peek out, sidelip rings and emo fringes, young black girls in tightly pulled back hair, tiny white shorts and slips and huge gold-colored chunks dangling from their ears. I realize I lack the vocabulary to describe what they are wearing. If I had to say something to them, would I be able to? If they started putting their feet on chairs and playing music (but what music?) on their mobiles and talking loudly, how cautious, how tentative would I be if I needed to defend my space. I am their mothers' age.

***

2 hours ago, we were sitting outside a Surinamese lunchroom chewing our rotis and discussing the beret-wearing old man dancing my the jazz record stall as though the street was a nightclub and he was the proprietor. He had the groove and slick moves and the turns and a smile for every lady, even hardened, hurried ones with the faces that formed themselves around an invisible infinite chain of smokes. He had the time and he had the attitude and it was a sunny day, a Saturday. And the only question that we were asking, was if it was sad or not. To which I said not because I usually have the counteropinion but also because I didn't want to be the one who says, "yes it is sad", even though I could feel it in my stomach, I could feel it in the way that after a few minutes it was difficult to keep viewing the guy. But I wouldn't admit it. "If we were in Cuba, we wouldn't even debate this issue", I said.

***

Sometimes, when people get online to use forums and groups and such, they don't have a feeling and then seek to express it. They get online because they want to feel something. They feel the need to have an emotion. This is not my observation, but something an Ivy League professor said to an Economist journalist. But I concur. This is why I am staying away. Not because I don't care. Because I am the opposite of these people (although I have been, and can easily turn, into a net addict any given time). Every time I don't practice my addiction to the sterilized, subdued pain we meet on forums, TV programs, radio call-in shows and expert advice columns, I come closer to the essence. Every time I do not apply something to change the color of my skin, I come closer to the girl who was the whitest at school, who came back blindingly white in the height of summer, when SPFs were just in development, when boys could just grab you and pull your shirt off because they felt like exposing the buds of your breasts. I was also a girl who, at one time, made jaws drop and eyes fixate, but that wasn't really me. It was a trick I learned. If you take away all the cosmetic surgeries and focused workouts and hairdye and tooth caps and makeup from any given celebrity (except, perhaps, Charlize Theron), what are you left with but some skin, bones, lard, and fear? If you take away the MySpace and the talkbacks and the empathy of usernames and carefully chosen avatars on internet forums, what are you left with but a child playing alone on endless blistering noontimes, trailing in empty corridors, befriending whitewashed walls?

***

The man kept dancing, visible through a herd of weekend shoppers of seemingly every race and color, and every combination thereof. Some looked away, some snickered, some turned to their companions, or even to strangers, as though saying "what can ya do?", one or two made the universal "loco" sign, some younger ones giggled, and the youngest shied away. The old man (in Hebrew and Spanish, one does not use the adjective for old to describe a man, because there is a single noun for "old man", as though by becoming old a man is not a man anymore but another entity, like a baby or a child which is not yet man) seemed happy with the attention. Perhaps manic, perhaps demented, or maybe just freaking happy with life on a sunny day, he continued to dance and host his private street party, smiling as though possessing some knowledge that transcended all the people whose destinies led them to the Netherlands' ethnic hub, as though he already knew what we have not even considered discovering. What awaits us all. I think of the unanswered text message; a family death, grief, loss, guilt, betrayal (while I think these thoughts, I do not cease to communicate and laugh with my fiancé). I know I am betraying too, but how can you resonate a stranger's pain, when they have not been there that weekend, and they do not even know the surface of your life? Although you want to, you truly really want to. And for a fleeting instance, you share their existence.

All you have to be is you (how to lose friends and alienate people)

2008-03-29T01:32:00.000-07:00

When I was a young child I had this recurrent thought before I let myself drift off. I was in a warm, single-story house (we had always lived in apartments), and there was a storm raging outside in the night, a strom so fierce it might've been a war. All our friends and relatives were already tucked safely in the other rooms of the house, butjust to make sure, I'd go through a mental inventory of my dog, my brother, my grandparets, uncles and aunts on both sides, cousins, dad's cousin and his children, neighbours, my parents best friends, then I'd go through my collection furry animals, and then I'd start thinking of more people who should be in, and so I'd run out into the poring rain and thunder in my night out, and drag them in from wherever the were hiding, unsuspecting that this storm was about to turn LETHAL. I'd bring in my best friend and my minor friends, and my classmates, making sure that those who were mean came in last, but still I'd bring in everyone I could think of, even the intimidating grocery store couple. Everyone who needed to be saved, everyone who was oblivious to the great grave danger. And when the house was full beyond capacity (I still have my spacious bed though), I'd let the thunder and sleets of rain loose, and sleep peacefully through it all, at peace with knowing that I saved EVERYONE.

I was 12 years old and brainwashed by Pat Robertson and the 700 Club. With all the paranoia in Israel about missionaries (culminating a few weeks ago in a packaged bomb sent to a preacher's son, who was severely and irrepearably wounded), I don't know why no one ever pointed out that having only recieving 3 channels, one of them entirely in Arabic, and one of them interviewing policticians and such on dingy looking sets, that the only thing to watch after school was manga versions of the New Testament, Christian workouts with a bubbly blonde in pink lycra, and the 700 Club with its narratives of salvation from misery, addiction and handicap. I didn't know much about religion, just the Judaism hated me if I didn't wear long skirts and stockings, prayed before I ate, drank or peed, and generally that nothing that I did in life - going to the beach, watching TV, reading, slow dancing with a boy on a Friday night, or eating cheese within 6 hours of having eaten pastrami - was in synch with Judaism at all. Although I am Jewish by birth, getting in touch with God, a God whose full name you were not allowed even to say, so that when you read the Bible in Bible class a few times a week, you had to be very careful not to utter the explicit name but say "the name" instead, required steps that were impossible to take unless I wanted to alienate my friends and annoy my parents far more than I already did. Jesus, however, was so readily available. On the Middle East Channel, broadcasting from Cyprus, Pat and his team of co-hosts and guests were welcoming and hearty, if you understood a bit of English. On every show Pat or another preacher, sometimes even a woman (who were not banished behind a screen in the back of the church-studio) would invite a standing, closed eyed, open armed audience to invite Jesus into their life. Since I was alone in the house, my brother was outside playing with his neighbourhood buddies, my parents at work, I'd ask Jesus for help to. I asked him from the bottom of my heart because there was so many things I needed help with. I needed to be pretty, I needed to lose weight, I needed to get my braces removed, I needed my breasts to stop growing, I needed boys to like me, hell even notice me, and girls to stop ridiculing me, I needed new clothes for that purpose, and I needed to somehow stop sliding into the endless pit that it academic failure, I needed love, I'd die without love.

I felt horribly guilty about these communions with Jesus. I knew we weren't supposed to talk to him, and I think even back then I had a slight suspicion towards the motives of white haired men in slick studios, although I don't remeber if they prompted donations on the show. I knew that Jews were not supposed to give in to Jesus, that Jewish bravery was being burned alive at the stake and not surrendering, that I was betraying millions of tortured souls. That our God was the real one, even if he wasn't nice, even if all he did was threaten and punish, he really cared. Even though the Bible was a mindnumbingly boring story of human and divine aggression, and the New testament (which I have somehow procurred by scanning my dad's bookshelves, finding a tiny, pocket-sized Gideons version of it) read like an teenage advice book, with instructions specifying each part for a different mood (it was hard deciding which nategory I belonged to between the various states of anxiety, fear and depression). I knew that I was doing something wrong, and my guilt about my daily meetings with Pat even overshadowed that over masturbating in the shower.

Many people I used to work with in my mid- to late-twenties have gone on in the field to become successful, well-known even. I read interviews with them, a review of their recent work, or watch their faces on online television. It took them about 5-7 years to make a real name for themselves, to earn 5 digit salaries, to fulfil themselves in exciting positions that take them around the world and put them in the center of attention. When I started working with these people, I met myself as I could have been if i didn't succumb to bullying, depression and neglect. if I hadn't let myself down over and over in the worst ways possible in my formative years. Shortly after that year of watching and kneeling with Pat and thighcrercising with the smiling Christian cheerleader, I pulled into the fast lane of adolescence. It took 2 years, and I went from being a child with breasts who turned to Jesus against her better judgement to a strung out, tattooed, cocksucking scavenger. The season has started, no holds barred. Men that 2 years later, 1 year later, 6 months later I wouldn't have even seen, they were so removed from my world in age, in demeanor, in geography, populated my world, and the children that I grew up with, the ball kicking tan boys with their scratched knees and vulgar vocabularies, the gum popping hardened girls with their underlined bikinis and lemon bleached curls, have evaporated into insignificance. I has stopped the bullying short about a year after Jesus and Pat came into my life, but it was too late. I had sold my soul to do that, sitting at the back of the bus, answering back to teachers and slamming doors, outstaring, smoking, popping beer cans, hitchhiking with girlfriends and them alone in the cars of sheepish looking men glancing over at a loss for words, sneaking to the city on Friday nights and into nightclubs where the guys were 18 or older and the girls looked 30 with their teased hair and frosted lips and skin tight minis. It all happened so fast. There was a void, but now it was filled by so much that had happened, phone calls, heart aches, blunts and pills, piercings and cuts, and always the men. Pregnancy wasn't a consideration, HIV was a rumor, other STDs didn't exist. The worst that happened was that someone took it much further than you wanted and then you pretended that it was actually what you wanted and when it was over your furatively licked your wounds. Your home was your body, and you would leave home (you dropped out of school, several schools) months earlier with your duffel bag and end up smoking a joint with a soldier on leave on the shore of the lake, or sleeping it off in somebody's basement, or drunk out of your head with a tourist by the beach. The panic never seized, because it didn't stop for a second.

When I started working, I mean working white collar jobs, working with creative, educated people in places where ideas had a life of their own, is when I realized much more painfully where I have made the wrond turn, betrayed myself in the most complete way, where all the men, even the worst of them, where just a prop, an accessory. I was lucky to be alive, healthy, pretty, I was lucky to have a brain which I could use to almost catch up with my peers, but I still had the hollowness, the depths that I have seen and been to and no one else could have imagined. I was remakably unscarred, save for some self made scars and markings, which I had become adept at hiding. My face was pure, my eyes held no clue to the images that lay behind them. But I remined opaque for many years. I didn't talk about it, I didn't meet anybody who even remotely echoed those times and days, not someone who made it out of there. Not someone who kept their sanity. I was busy with living, with learning to socialize, with spending time with men platonically, more often than not, with learning an art of flirting that didn't lead to being taken there and there, with seeing humans - often with shadows, often threatening, but human nonetheless. It was a long, slow learning curve studded with crisis and drama, crying and jealousy fits to my boyfriends, anger at my bosses, hisses over the unfairness of it all. But I trampled on, and I thought that this was as good as it gets. By acting out as a teen, I became what I wanted to be, a rebel, a ruthless outsider, until I almost couldn't go back anymore, went so far into the storm the house was but a hint of illuminessennce, but I clawed my way back, and the the people were still there, and there was still some room for me. To think that this all started with Pat Robertson, an evangelist preacher, slowly prodding me towards the edge.

Love, actually

2008-03-27T01:07:00.000-07:00

Real love is not just about sunsets and ancient bridges, it’s about taking what you can and seeing the best. It's about accepting the person and reality for what it is. Real life, like real love, is being in the moment, not escaping from it. If your loved one farts in the shower every morning, you joke about it, and if he snores, you accept it, maybe by moving to another bed (or sending him to sleep there). You learn not to expect or need big romantic gestures, they’re good for telling your friends about them but not as good as having your lover take time off work to meet the plumber or pick up food on the way home or make love to you the way that you need it (which is not, and will never be, the way that it’s written in a Danielle Steele novel or seen in a movie, not even an indie movie). Real love will gladly incorporate Paris and Venice, but it’s not about them. When you long for it, you don’t long for those peaks and highlights (which are always surrounded by mundane and hectic “we’re gonna be late!” moments anyway) but for a simple presence, and you know you can’t live without that presence, so that’s why you get married. No, correction: that’s why you apply pressure on him to marry you (and also because you want the security and seriousness that comes when people hear you’re getting married, even your bosses, even in this day and age, and you want the relief for your parents, even though nothing’s final, even though marriage is just a piece of paper these days), and when he relents, you may worry that it wasn’t romantic enough, that he just might not want it enough, because he didn’t set up a romantic scene and didn’t kneel and there was no ring, it was just something that happened in bed one day after many times that it was brought up, mostly by you. You worry about that and crave holiday brochure type romance, and while you’re worrying you miss out on the fact that your lover is always there, is always available, even when he himself is preoccupied with work and looking for a job that will take care of the baby you are trying to conceive. And even though when you ask him in a teacher-voice, “so, are you ready to be a husband and a father?” he nearly spits out his dinner, that is what both of you are doing, preparing to be a family, even though you do it in the amicable, jokey way you always do things. That's the way you make love, and that’s also the way you try to have a baby, not with the solemn passion of doomed relationships but with a wink and a grin, and when either of you comes, you start laughing, and you imitate each other’s spasms sometimes for the heck of it, and you don’t mind that one of you is HIV positive, and you don’t fear the reaper. As bloody much.

ICP 2.8

2008-02-03T05:07:00.000-08:00

...(dialogue)

I am honored to feature the new edition of the International Carnival of Positivities, as usual, graciously assembled by Ron.
The links in the Carnival are mostly categorized according to their writers' own classification.
I've been trying to write some kind of adequate intro to this ICP for a while, to no avail. Just honored to be a small part of this really. And if you feel like me, please let the authors know. Even a little comment can mean an awful lot.

News

Edwin at Criminal HIV Transmission, a "collection of published news stories about criminal HIV exposure/transmission cases around the world, and other relevant material", presents Australia: SA judge may relax Stuart McDonald's onerous bail conditions.

"Funding for HIV research is higher than for any other virus. But is it in the right places?" - Dr. Dave Wessner presents HIV Research Funding, posted at The AIDS Pandemic.

On Women's Health News, Rachel presents Newsweek Gets "Gay" MRSA Story Right, CWA Gets it Oh So Wrong. It's about, she says, "how appalling Concerned Women for America's coverage of the 'gay MRSA' story was. It's not HIV-specific, but I think we're seeing a similar overreaction/denial of reality/homophobia with this story".

International

"The center began a bathing program in which the children were afforded the opportunity to shower every Saturday with soap. In Mwandi, soap is a luxury item that many parents and guardians can not afford". The Plight of AIDS Orphans, by James Hammonds and Dr. Dave Wessner, posted on The AIDS Pandemic.

GayUganda presents GayUganda: Is this genocide?, about gay exclusion from the African HIV picture, posted at GayUganda.

Brian Finch, "a guy who’s turned living with HIV into an envious art form", presents This is the birthplace of my transformation posted on the heartwarming acidereflux.com (Acid Reflux: Out in Africa).

"The 17-year-old Bangladeshi has a lot going for her. Mature beyond her age, she had a good understanding of what she has been through, as a daughter of a sex worker, and of how society sees and judges her". Nalaka Gunawardene presents Portraits of Commitment: New face of HIV/AIDS in Asia « Moving Images, Moving People! posted at Moving Images, Moving People!.

Politics

“HIV/AIDS is still a threat to both the United States and abroad. Yet America’s approach to this epidemic has been rather flawed given the emphasis placed on ideology over science-based strategies and tactics”. Sean Kosofsky presents HIV positions of Presidential contenders? posted at The Bilerico Project.

"Political divides in any country get in the way of public health. Kenya is now in uproar and the people are suffering and dying. What shame we should all feel", writes Mshairi about the post Blood Lust, on Mshairi.

Testing issues

Rachel presents Perspectives on Mandatory HIV Testing of Pregnant Women in New Jersey, a summary of reactions and viewpoints on this issue, posted at Our Bodies Ourselves.

Health

Jim presents LifeLube: the blog: MRSA - Let's take care of ourselves & each other posted at LifeLube: the blog.

Video

Dr. Rufus presents YouTube - HIV Replication 3D Animation posted at YouTube. Dr. Rufus' site includes numerous 3D illustrations of bodily mechanisms.

On Youtube, Batiswifey presents the Posi+ive HIV/AIDS prevention campaign video.

Living with HIV/AIDS

Mr. C presents Positive Living in a Negative World: The End of 2007, My Review posted at Positive Living in a Negative World.

"You don't need to understand God to recognize Grace" on Marc's Myspace blog.

“Here is how it happens, you go into the doctors to discuss treatment options and get the facts about such treatments so you know side effects, long term and short term things like that. The doctor has a strange look on his face. You know, the kind of look you'd get if you went to gynecologist for an ear ache”. Also on Myspace, Mike presents A news update.

On kickin tina, warrior scout presents dance hall days .

Support

Joe.My.God presents Rethinking AIDS Spending, posted at Joe. My. God..

A Single Man presents Hey, come take a look at this on A Single Man: "musings, rants, heartaches & commentary from a soon-to-be widower after 24 years with a wonderful man".

Empowerment

Ron Hudson links to Annie Lennox Sing, saying: "I was unable to get permission from Annie Lennox' site, but I found this note on it about getting involved. I don't think that they will mind if we promote their project. Tell your friends, collegues, and everyone you know about .: SING :. and encourage them to find out fmore and get involved".

Spirituality

Jeremiah presents Tuesday thoughts, posted at The Evolution of Jeremiah.

"Universal peace, an end to hunger and poverty, cures to AIDS, heart disease and cancer, a clean and healthy environment, harmony in relationships and, most importantly, love and acceptance of ourselves could be a reality, if we can close the opportunity gap between what we do and what we are capable of doing". Jeremy Neal presents The Solution to all of the Worlds Problems, posted at Thoughts on Quotes.

Visual Art

2sides2ron features Farid de la Ossa's Male and Female Rebirth: Guest Artist Farid de la Ossa, "an acknowledgment for all those women of the world who have to redefine themselves starting with nothing in order to make it in life”.

Roadside billboard, Portugal, Jan 2008: "Seropositive: discover your power to reflourish" (photo: Dragonette).

Monologue

2008-02-03T04:01:00.000-08:00

I’ve been away for so long, due to a combination of factors. Actually what brought me back to the blog is the fact that I volunteered (seems a somewhat dramatic term, but can't think of something more accurate) to host (again seems overly dramatic) the upcoming edition of the International Carnival of Positivities.

I've mentioned the ICP here last time I blogged. It's a collection of writing by different pozzies from all over the world and all ethnicities and background. Actually not only pozzies, anyone else involved, anyone else who cares, basically, can participate in it. It's Ron Hudson's baby, so I will stop sounding as though I know anything much about the doctrine behind it. I'll just say it's a beautiful thing.

What has kept me away was resistance, not just my own version of the virus resisting the meds but the medical establishment (or rather, 2-3 members of this establishment) resisting my health crisis. It took a while to get that sorted. To make a long story short, my nurse practitioner failed to register all my blood results in my file, so my doctor was not fully aware of the exact number of times that I had turned out detectable. Even so he was concerned, but when he raised that in a meeting, the same nurse claimed that I was not adhering to the meds. Not true. So I had a really hard time convincing them to a) see me off-schedule and b) change my meds. It was the same nurse who refused to let me see the doctor. I got over that, but only after involving and evoke one very respectable member ID docs community. And I used what we call Vitamin P in Israel, I would never have believed that I would resort to this, and actually I didn't quite. After getting the second and third opinions that I had to switch ASAP, and still getting that refusal to even discuss things with my doctor (I was unaware that he had received all this misleading info from the nurse), my dad, yes my dad, called the doctor behind my back. I didn't even have his number, I actually was adamant that my dad would interfere because I thought it would surely backfire on me (and make me look like a stupid, weak daddy's girl), but he did it anyway. And it worked. The next day, I had an off-schedule appointment, and when we met and compared information, it became clear that the nurse was the crux of the problem. The bureaucratic problem, that is, not the resistance problem. But you know systems have bugs too.

The doctor changed one of my meds, but he prescribed the wrong dose, 2 pills instead of 4 per day. And I somehow discovered it, thanks to the AIDSmeds lessons. I didn't even specifically look up dosage, but somehow trying to decide which would be the lesser of evils when it comes to PIs, I made a subconscious mental note that Invirase was 2,000 mg a day. I just couldn't believe that my doctor could prescribe a wrong dose. When I told him, he apologized profusely, he said had I taken his dose, given my rising VL, I would've acquired the resistance from hell.

Speaking of resistance from hell, a friend has been diagnosed with a multiple resistance to all existing meds and classes. How did that happen? How did she go from no resistance to resistance to everything (except, hopefully, the integrase-inhibitors coming out now, which haven't yet reached the Netherlands)? No one can know for sure, but it did coincide with her having unprotected sex with her new boyfriend. He gave me a ride home when I came back from Spain this Jan. We were talking about his bisexuality and he said that he has no secrets from my friend. But in the beginning, she assumed that he wasn't on meds because his numbers were good. After a couple months, she realized that his CD4s were a few dozen and his VL immeasurably high, and the only reason he wasn't on treatment was that he had to finish Interferon first.Yeah, I know there is no proof of a super-strain. I know. This is just my friend’s story as I know it. And now we are waiting to see if 15 years of survival with this virus, with a CD4 count of well over a 1,000 and plans to have a baby and a marriage set for this summer will be saved by the patented innovations coming from the West. And yes, she should have known better. But after 15 years with the bug and 5 years in exile, she is love-famished. Aren't we all.

Another thing that kept me away from blogging was just stress, or as it chooses to manifest in my case in RSI (repeated stress injury), which makes it painful to use a keyboard. Always uncomfortable but sometimes unbearably so. That's a real threat to me, my livelihood, and my dreams. I have developed an internet addiction instead, just surfing the net, which is bad but not as bad as typing. OK the mouse is probably the worst thing for RSI, but I lied to myself that just viewing things online I don't use it as often. Yeah right. My belated resolution for 2008 is not to keep replacing addiction with addiction.

Speaking of addiction, haven't smoked in a few months. I wasn't really addicted to cigarettes, not in this cycle, I was horribly addicted back in the day but after quitting for 4 years and even after the chain-smoking period around my diagnosis, I managed to only smoke a couple and only after supper (unless I was socializing or traveling). But I cut it out completely, and the main reason is that, incredibly, we are trying to get pregnant. Which is such a wonderful thing, that I can't say anything about it. And like most wonderful things, it is accompanied by a huge anxiety. I almost don't have anything that one needs to have a child. Not permanent job, and neither does P., who's actually been unemployed (but at least on benefits) since Nov. He is still working, but not getting paid, trying to finish what he came here to do. I have never seen him stressed, but I started to realize that he is, in fact, whether he shows it or not. We had a wonderful holiday together in Spain and Portugal over the holidays. And when we came back, well, just started doing it. I mean, we've had the informative conversation and picked up the "gear" some months before, but I never thought we'd actually start. But we have. It hasn't worked yet. And I don't know if I am relieved or disappointed. Bit of both I guess.

It's a brave new world I am in, but I still wrestle with the old habits and thinking patterns. I still feel a loser a good part of each day, I still hate and fear my body and my image, I still hide my mental and physical scars and scarring. I still want things that seem so far away. I still get insulted when people are being assholes for no reason, and I take it on myself instead of seeing their pain. I have a long way to go. The future is just as uncertain as it ever was and the fears cast larger shadows, things so painful and primal that I don't want to write about them now. Some things are too menacing for a monologue. And maybe that's the main reason I stopped writing here, all due respect to stiff limbs and shattered wrists. it wasn't comforting enough. The monologue went on for so long. Time for a dialogue. Coming soon. Watch this space.

Not the only one (thank you Ron)

2007-11-12T01:18:00.000-08:00

When I started blogging, I didn’t know anyone like me online and only a couple offline. I didn’t even start using AIDSmeds yet. Now I know there are so many people like me. I knew there were 65 million of us, I just didn’t know any of us. I knew the names of some celebrities who died of AIDS – most recently, in Israel, Ofra Haza, a very famous singer who died secretly in her home and I am not even sure how the press got a hold of the fact that she was positive. I don’t know if she died from neglecting the disease so much and not seeking help until it was too late, and unprofessional help at that (because money will buy you the best medical attention but also the worst neglect and coverup if you seek that). Not long after her death her husband killed himself by overdosing on cocaine and running on a treadmill. His heart exploded. His family refused to make the autopsy results public, to reveal whether he was positive or not.
Haza always had a public image of someone who was immaculate, virginal, pure. Unlike most successful female singers nowadays, she never exploited her sexuality. The public image of her husband was of this rough man who was involved in shady business operations abroad (and yeah, to look at him, he is certainly not someone I’d go to bed with, condom or no; that is not to say I haven't done that with equally scary people), someone who has kidnapped the virginal 40 year old singer into a dark world of contamination. This is pretty much the image of HIV/AIDS in Israel to this day. Something that happens because you meet the wrong people, get involved with the wrong things. Something which corrupts you, a manifestation of your corruption if you will. I don’t think this image changed any in the years since Haza’s death.

In Israel there is always a sense of “not now”. Of course there is no time, resources, capacity, to do something about HIV/AIDS. Do you really think a country fighting to survive (insert crisis of the week:) terrorism, war, economic collapse, immigration waves, corruption, violence, social chasms, environmental emergencies or just plain making it safely back from work on the asphalt jungle has time on its agenda for a few/a hundred/a thousand/four thousand/and counting citizens who chose to have unprotected sex? And cost the government so much? They should take their drugs (however harsh they might be, they should be grateful for anything they can get their hands on, even if it’s rat poison) and sit quietly until they die. No, they should work, because my tax money shouldn’t cover those who don’t cover their asses. But wait, I don’t want them working in my office/in my son’s school/as my hairdresser. No, the best thing is if they go away. I don’t want to read about them in the paper when I am having breakfast in the 10 minutes I have before running to the nearest traffic jam. I don’t want to think about anal gay sex when I’m relaxing with my paper. OK not just anal, anyway I don’t want to think about it. Whatever happens in women’s genitals is best left undiscussed. Yes I know some guys get it too, the ones who went to massage parlors in Thailand or visit the Russians here. Well they deserve it. They shouldn’t go there in the first place and they should cover it up if they do, I don’t have to pay for the results of their stupid actions. Let me just mind my business. And I don’t want my kids thinking about these things either. Sure I want them to use condoms when they have sex (when they are much older of course), just like I don’t want them to smoke and drink, but I don’t want me or my kids to pay for the sexual mistakes of others, and I although I don’t exactly wish them death and don’t mind that they get some treatments to make their life last longer, I don’t want to know anything about it. We understood that in the 80s you didn’t know but now is the 21st century and it’s your fault for getting into this situation, so don’t bother us with that anymore.
Yes, I think that pretty much sums up public opinion in Israel. That is the mainstream, moderate, educated, pretty liberal opinion, because there are a lot of people who would just let us die if they had control over the budget, and devote the money instead to breeding a special kind of red cow to be sacrificed in the third temple or something equally functional. I think in 2015 (or is it 2025) these folks will be the majority, Israel will be Back in Black.
So I’m not writing about my life today, OK? I am writing about other people, them who got the bug before me, them who even got it after me. They are blonde, dark, tall, short, thin, fat, middle age, young, fat, educated, windowed, sex-crazy, celibate, gay, hetero, bi, American, Norwegian, Mexican, Chinese, Israeli, Yemeni, Surinamese, Dutch, British, Canadian, Cameroonian, Zimbabwean, South African, rich, welfare dependent, former prostitute, maternal, active, pretty, ravaged - I could go on and on, but tried not to include only the characteristics of the people who I consider friends, who also have HIV. At one point in time HIV entered our organism and determined not just a life of drug dependency (if we’re lucky) and a further degree of social seclusion, it also determined that we would meet each other and care about each other. Just this little piece of DNA. So now I can sit at home and read about this topic, which has become the most important one for me, and I am still struggling with that because I know that there are so many other things to deal with in this life, and so many beautiful distractions. Is HIV on my own agenda? Not always, so I can’t really blame Mr Newspaper. He has a lot on his plate. Kids to get to school, taxes to pay, a demanding boss. Can I ask him for more than he had already give? Can I ask him to care? Do I have to compete with cancer patients, abused children, disenfranchised workers to get into his mind, can I stop being a Topic and start being a Person? Only if I make HIV a dinner topic I s'pose. Can I do that? Can I get over my fear of seclusion and work towards inclusion? Or do I only care about my positive peers now? Am I a 100% HIV because I live with it? Or can I be divided, and will this division turn into a pretence that will turn into a deeper form of shame?

I guess I will keep asking, and read what others have to say, and be a part of that:

http://slimconomy.blogspot.com/2007/11/w-elcome-to-november-10-2007-edition-of.html

International Carnival of Positivities 17 – big thank you to Ron Hudson who does this wonderful work of putting isolated HIV writers out there in all their diversity… and relate us to each other.

Exhale

2007-11-06T01:36:00.000-08:00

I think that sums up pretty well how I feel now. Too tired to work, socialize or even have sex(!). Never mind sex, to tired to breath properly, so I hyperventilate. I drag myself to work every day, not even showering regularly anymore, not cooking, going to the gym maybe once-twice a week. Something's gotta give cos I am not used to living that way. Maybe it has to do with being deprived of sleep or my stomach being almost constantly upset due to the new medication. yes, new meds. Just 2-3 months after making the switch from Stokrin (Sustiva) to Viramune due to the severe insomnia and near psychotic thoughts that the former induced, I had to switch to the more primitive Invirase+ Norvir, both protease inhibitors, because I was coming up detectable in my viral load tests consecutively. That itself was a huge struggle that took a few stressful weeks (OK, maybe I need to update my definition of a huge struggle). Apparently, Mr. Moody my nurse practitioner has failed to note the 1st time I was detectable in my file, and then, when the 2 other results were brought up in a staff meeting and my new doctor suggested switching me to avoid resistance, he said that I was not adhering properly to the meds. That's complete bollocks of course. Then I had to go and get a 2nd or 3rd opinion, I say I had to but it was really my dad who went through this, but even after that Mr nurse would still not let me get an appointment with the doctor. Finally I sent a desperate email to T. my social worker, pasting the 3rd opinion in there, but at the same time my dad (although I had forbidden him to) called the doctor, so I got to see him the next day. But he wrote me a wrong dose - 1000 mg instead of the standard 2000 per day. I don't know how I remembered it because I never look up doses and such, but somehow in the back of my mind I stored the knowledge that this wasn't appropriate, and looked it up. Well the doctor was duly embarrassed, especially since Dr. 3rd Opinion is a name that really impresses in this field. But all by complete coincidence, because I never even would have been seen by 3rd Op on my trip to London in August, unless the system here was so heel dragging that my neurologist appointment (for the PN) was scheduled 6 months in advance. If the Dutch health system wasn't blocked & if I hadn't met him (again dad's initiative which I was informed about later; that makes me sound like such a daddy's girl but this is the first time that he intervenes in years, emailing and making a Harley Street appointment for me), and if and if... I would've developed the resistance from hell by now. I still have to wait for the test results to prove it. I hope it won't be, I mean, there is nothing I would love right now than to get back on Viramune, with a much lesser risk of lipo and high cholesterol and gut issues... The doctor did say that I could get on a new PI, Presitza (or is it Prezista?) once I don't have plans to get pregnant. That's all it is now. Plans for the future, and pretty vague ones at that. Even though last week me & p sat at the aggressively assertive female gyn's office and were handed small syringes and cum containers, it didn't feel real. It felt like two kids pretending, and I have a feeling she wasn't fooled either. Sure, we have talked about it, or rather, I talked and he agreed to talk with me about it. But I somehow can't imagine this coming into fruition, and not just because of him. I am just so bloody exhausted all the time, if I had a child now I would just collapse, seriously. Not to mention fired - my job doesn't allot time for maternity leave (or any leave for that matter), and I may be granted an exceptional extension (which I badly need) based on my dramatically different disease, but they sure as hell won't be pleased to see me bring a child into this world. I suspect that's when the prejudice will really shine through. I mean, my boss is keeping away from me since he has found out I have a boyfriend. That's the thing I have found with a few so-called friends too, especially the ones who are so liberal HIV shouldn't even be an issue. But there is HIV, and there is having sex when you're HIV. I am not a mind reader, but I can certainly guess what they are thinking. How does he do it? How can he? Oh. My. God.
Well, the last thing that will stop me getting pregnant is my job, as uncertain as the future might be. I mean, at the end of the day this job won't even pay me a pension, or social security for that matter. It's not like I can expect lifelong employment there, although sure, it is a chance and a way in to something I am not sure I even want. But if something does stop me is this frigging exhaustion. I now I will drag my pasty, grainy, worn-out self to work...

Learning

2007-09-16T04:15:00.000-07:00

So just a few words before I rush off to the gym... I have been trying to fit in the virtual poz world, but it's not really working out. You can spend hours a day reading posts, keeping up with others' lives, learning their whims, but when you try to correspond with them, at least in my case, there is a serious breakdown in communication. I don't know if it because my English is not as good as it can be when I am interacting, or whether like in any group, in an online community there are only few people that can really get me, and I them. I do feel that I have a soft spot for pretty much everyone I meet online (with the exception of cheaters). I don't care what people do and did, I don't judge anyone because I know how close I have been to even the most extreme behaviors myself, and I also know or rather kind of sense what makes people move in these directions. More than anything, I know what I don't know, I don't know what it is like to be black and poor, or live in a trailer park, or live in America for that matter, I have but the vaguest idea what it is like to be gay and no idea what is it like to be gay and male (although I have learned some from watching Stuart and his friends on Channel 4's Queer as Folk, but TV will only get you that far), I certainly don't know what it's like to live in a 3rd world country with this disease, or be a refugee in Europe, or be a European... I don't know what it feels like to be married, or bear a child, or overcome heroin or crystal meth addiction (although I know something about addiction, including the fact that it never lets go completely).

I don't know, and if I can sum up a year or so if interacting with poz people online, this is the one thing I learned. I haven't a clue, and I have no call for judgement or opinion because I haven't a clue (but regardless of my "right" for it, my opinion just went out the window).

I learned that I was oblivious. B. used to call me inoccent, and I never beleived it, I thought it was foolish romaticizing, but now I know that it's true. I am still gossipy, mean and grumpy, and can still speak harshly and regret it, and what I learned was that we all are. But some are trying hard not to be, and these are the ones that will lash out if you're not careful. And I learned that compared to the intensity of virtual life, real life can be soothing. With all it's ups and downs, I prefer it. As if that wasn't obvious. And yet how many hours, weeks, months, have I hidden from the world behind the computer. Like any addictive substance it is hard to seperate its necessity from compulsion. Of course we need to eat, but not 24/7. Of course I need to use it for work and communication, but where is the line drawn between using it for benifit and using it for escape? I thought that I wouldn't be judged harshly online and by my peers, I thought the rules were different, and they are and they are not. So I am backing off, I am tired of fighting to join in and be accepted, and if it were the real world I would have done so a long time ago. I will still post practical questions and the like when they arise, and reply to any personal contacts I made, but I will not take it further than that. For one thing I must save my wrist for other activities, but even more so (and my wrist is in pretty bad shape) I have to shield myself.

Violently happy

2007-09-04T23:16:00.001-07:00

I do take into account that the fact that I wake up and all I want to do is grab my work and delve into it, or slip into my jogging gear and out the door and into the exceedingly colder and wetter outdoors, or into P's bed (because we sleep separately most nights, that way I can toss and turn away my PN-like symptoms, and P can snore to his heart's content), could be just a pseudo-manic episode or a post-menstrual high. So instead of following up on any of these options I end up here, with oatmeal and Moroccan tea in front of the keyboard (the only time I don't eat in front of which is at dinner, when I trade the laptop screen with the TV's). I mean, I know I am happy, but there are still stings of fear and anger and restlessness. I can still wake up and think of a member on AIDSmeds who shunned me and blocked my PMs (and it wasn't as though I was bombarding him with them, I only wrote him once in response to his question I didn't feel comfortable answering on the forums, and then once again to ask what's up when instead of responding like I asked him to, he started a bit of online bullying). I also think how much I regret spewing and frothing over one very public HIV figure's glamorous appearance and demeanor. I still feel what I said and I still think that public people with this disease should be more down to earth and less aloof and glamorous. If Magic Johnson could tell the world his secrets to staying healthy and looking so great after all these years, that would be awesome. It sure as hell isn't Kaletra, which is is the spokesperson of, keeping him that way. Ditto for Regan. But I should not have been cruel with my words. Thing is I am angry and terrified sometimes and we all need all the help we can get, but there is such a disparity between the poz community and the poz celebrities, as much as there is one between the general community and the Hollywood community.

I forget though that poz celebrities are not "our" celebrities but the "faces of AIDS" to the entire community. And this also sends a twisted message across. If the only poz people that the public recognizes are rich, glam, and successful, then HIV/AIDS is completely solved, and why should any funds be dedicated to unluckier folks, who should have gotten their act together and climb to the top like the others. HIV hardly seems like a handicap or a serious problem anymore, let alone a chronic and still terminal disease. And most importantly, the disfiguring qualities of the meds and their toil on health and functionality are completely disregarded. And it also sends a message to young people, especially gays, that it ain't so bad.

I also think a lot about the people I meet, online and in real life, especially women, who are so screwed by this disease. It seems to combine with other factors like a poor socioeconomic status, former addictions and their social implication, and so many other problems to depress women down that much further. I am lucky that HIV - the tag not the disease - hasn't stopped me and slowed me down in any way, but I always remember that unlike these women who are secured on social benefits, as meagre as that won't be, I have no rights in any country. For that, I am increasingly angry with my employers taking advantage of the desperation of young academics. I am angry because this is the first time that it happened to me and it coincides with my losing my rights at home as a consequence of my residency being revoked and the fact that I haven't paid taxes in so long, and that this happens at the time in my life and age when I need this safety net more than ever.

So when I think about that I see a dreaded vision of the future in which I am older, uglier, sicker, poor and maybe even homeless, surviving on only the most basic of benefits, dragging my sick ass to hospitals, looking as sick or sicker than I actually am. It's a horrendous vision, and it encapsulates everything that I am afraid of. It is actually the vision that I had previously of me being over 60 or at the age when no one will hire me for work anymore (40?), except it has been speeded up into the foreseeable future, because that's what HIV does to you. It accelerates the aging process, whether science describes is that way or not, this is what happens, and it puts you in harm's way in the same way that being fastforwarded into your retirement without a pension would.

So given this mix of reality, fears and thoughts, can I be blamed for distrusting my own happiness, for sticking pins into my own hot air balloon when it rises more than a few feet of the ground? It's so hard to let go of these fears when every day I am confronted with them. I know that had I not been involved with other poz people I probably would do a better job at suppressing them and focusing on the now, but I feel that I need - should - be involved. Not because I delude myself that I can help others that well, but because this is part of my identity now and I can't ignore it. If I did it will backfire sooner or later. But then again ignorance is bliss. I wish I could just let this drop and just be me without the diagnosis, but with all the good things it had already brought me like my relationship, my better interactions with the environment, my appreciation of the now, my increased emotionality and receptiveness. But unfortunately these come embedded in a great big thorn bush of fear, so that whenever I reach for one of them I come away wounded, and the longer I manage to hold on to them, the more I bleed fear afterwards. So that's what I'm doing here. And I am still violently happy.

Just be

2007-09-03T09:58:00.000-07:00

This year has been a difficult one for writing. I don't mean 2007, I mean the 2nd year of diagnosis. I moved into something else, and it's something I am particulalrly fond of. Unchartered terittory. What I meant to write in the previous post was so different from what actually appeared on the screen. I wanted to write about how all my feelings and way of living are different now than what I could possibly imagine, but what came out was a rant, a distraction. That's because life keeps distracting me. Real or virtual events interfere with what goes on when everything is quiet, late at night, my real existence.

I can't really explain it. I think it has something to do with being loved for the first time.

Not that my parents didn't love me, they loved me with all their heart, and then some. But they didn't know what to do with me, and I didn't know what to do with myself. That's why I kept getting into so much trouble, trouble that I created. I don't want to delve into these deep dark days and I rarely pause to think about them, but I know that I create struggles and hassles in a life which is nothing but hassle free, simply because I can't sit and absorb for a second the simple fact that I am just happy. Yes, asides from the constant noise of things that need to be done, which I don't quite know how to do, and then cacophony of anxieties and sorrows, I am just happy. Happy to come home to a messy house that can never be made to look tidy or clean, happy to see my less than perfect body and face in the mirror, happy to F up at work and be lazy, happy to be screwed by my bosses, because all of those things don't seem to touch me. Until they do, like yesterday, when that stupid buffed up guy at the gym kept insisting that my face has change and it is in fact much thinner than it used to be some months ago. That ruined everything for me. Or did it? I knew I was making some kind of choice by getting upset over that, and it was like, let's dive right in. A good excuse to buy a pack of smokes, a good excuse to let out the pain on the forums and get support, a good excuse to freak out. And I am freaking out, this should not be happening, not according to what the doctors say, but I do know enough now about HIV to know that even the biggest experts don't know that much as they appear to. And yet this doesn't change the simple basic fact that I am happy, happy to just sit on the couch and look outside at the joggers and the cyclists and smoke a cigarette with that pang of guilt that is getting weaker (because I am getting my fix of excercise still), happy to open a book and read it slowly, happy to let time toil by like an idle teenager, as though I had nothing but time. The panicky voices inside me know that it is quite the opposite, but the calm, sleepy alternative remains. So what if I don't know what P's gonna do, and he doesn't know either, and it's not that the deadline is approaching, the deadline's passed already? So what if I have no rights in this country if something goes wrong? So what if each menustration drains a little of my fertility away? So what if my friends at home ignored and avoided me the last time I was there, and my only contacts are with the people who surround me physically now? So what if my bosses shamlessly stole my ideas and capitalized on them?

Really, so what....? All we have is the moment.

I guess this is what happiness is... a freedom, a breakaway, from all the things you thought you must a should be, beautiful, smart, succesful, secure, protected.

I have everything that I need right now. Because of P. It did change my life, falling in love like this, and there is no other way to look at it. It makes everything more lucid, and everytime I turn back and fall on some familiar or urgent grudge or agony, it is because the air is so fresh that I have to pollute a little to be able to breathe it.

Unchartered territory

2007-07-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

You wake up one day into what is to become the nightmare version of your life, the inconceivable. This is the day that you will be branded a low-grade biohazard, although it will be done gently and considerably. Technically, nothing should change. In practice, everything does. You are stripped of your identity and must face the world in your new one. Like a prostitute in a shop window, you are naked, except maybe for a thin layer of liquid silicone to make your skin appear mannequin smooth. It is not even dry yet, and you are sent to stand on the street against the elements: the wind, the rain, the passers by. You are at the mercy of all of them, and you will remain so for the rest of your life.

Because a HIV status turns things around. Whatever you have been, you are now less of that thing. And less here is more. The additional stigma will weigh heavily from anything you've done, diminishing from it. You are no longer a young single mother, you are a young single HIV+ mother. You are no longer a recovering addict, you are a HIV+ former junkie. You are no longer a foreigner, with all the implications and unspoken accusations that accompany being one no matter which country you emigrated to, you are a HIV+ foreigner. You are no longer unemployed, you are HIV+ and unemployed. And goes with our saying, you are no longer a homosexual, but a HIV+ homosexual. And so forth...

And the only thing you can do is bear the burden in some shape or form. You can ignore it, but ignoring HIV always appears to lead to at least one of two things: self destruction in one form or another (drugs, pills, alcohol) and self denial which often leads to infecting others. Even when you don't infect your partner, you are living a lie, and every fiber of your being screams that constantly.
So some people go into denial. If not denial, into semi-denial and seclusion. They don't pretend not to have it, they just withdraw. They stay home, they eat alone, they avoid friends and family, the slip down into the dank well of depression. And I know because I have been there. Walking from room to room in my parents house. Slipping out for cigarettes and ducking whenever a neighbour passed by for fear of being spotted and chatted to. And to a certain extent I still do that whenever I go home. My last visit, which was a spontaneous week in June decided on just days before, I went to my first family thing voluntarily. There are many members of my family I haven't seen for years, cousins and the like, I am sure they have forgotten all about me. And why shouldn't they? They've gotten married, had children, got into the daily grind, established their adult identity, while I was clinging to shreds of my youthful one, and when the diagnosis came they turned to dust in my hands. I couldn't be the lighthearted persona I always pretended to be (though nothing could be further from the truth). I have wasted my entire life creating a self image. I have wasted it in front of mirrors, and now I couldn't even look at a mirror. I felt a surge of dread and utter panic whenever I even glanced at myself. There was no escape from me. There was no going back, no undoing. I was in my 30s, sucked into the whirlpool of adult education (for those who can't teach, and those who can't even teach, learn, and those who can't even learn properly, learn something completely impractical), without any economic stability or social rights where I was living, without a future or any type of assimilation or affiliation with that country, with a long and winding history of making wrong decisions, of running away, of embarrassing my hard working, long suffering parents, with many a dark secret tucked away in the torture cellar of my teens, on which I managed to built some sort of unplanned shack. Other people had buildings, because they had the foundations. I had the traitorous soil above that hollow of horrors, and I did what I could, and it was ramshackle but it was my own, and now I could see it for what it was, a frail, crooked assembly of bits and pieces, barely standing, but adorned with a huge flickering neon sign like a jungle path brothel, screaming AIDS.

There are so many ways to tell this story, and using metaphors is just one of them. But the truth is, i didn't even have that, I didn't have the words, they only came later. I just had the overwhelming panic. Sitting on a dark, packed, humming jumbo, knowing that I am the only one, knowing that I am the outcast. Coming out into the bustling world of travel and leisure, of business and family, but I have already written about that. There was just a big nothing. And there was nothing I could do but fall head first into that nothing. And when I try to look ahead now, the only thing I see is fog. I do see shapes in it though, but I have no idea how concrete they are. And I don't even dare to hope for them, but who am I kidding, I totally do. I want to finish this demeaning adjective. project and I want to move to Spain and I want to hide my tattoos and I want to get married and be a mom, and of course I want that with P. And then I want to teach English at a university to bright, outgoing students that I will really like and work hard for. And then I definitely want to write my book, so I wouldn't have to keep living off the odd jobs anymore. But I am not naive enough to trust that dreams lead to reality. I am still scared, and when I see other poz women, they just never seem to reach a peace of mind either. There is so much instability ingrained in this status, that I can see how people lose everything and become dependent on the state, or even homeless, when they are diagnosed. It is the stone that tips the scales and you fall off them with it strapped unto your body. If you were doing alright, you might still keep your head above, but you will have to struggle much harder with the currents. If you were already doing poorly, you probably just drown. Either way you are on your own. There are other HIV+ you can communicate with to see how they are doing, but you cannot generalize from them to you. You can find solace in others, but you go alone into the great unknown, at the whim of politicians and policy makers even more than most of that, at the mercy of fickle, relentless public opinion, positive for thorn in their side, positive for burden on their budget, positive for unwelcome conversation topics, positive for their unspoken deepest fears.

And that's where you are, unchartered territory. No one has walked here before you, although there are some trails around you but they are few between and faded. You walk and you walk, you make your life journey, despite all this. You see others making theirs. And some may not even have your status, but they are struggling their as well. And there is nothing more I can write about this, because I don't know what is around the bend, I can't guess. I can'only duck my head down and keep walking. And that means in very practical terms, get up, make myself reasonably pretty, go to work, do stuff, go home or to the gym, try to take care of my boyfriends, call my parents, and live almost as though HIV was not part of my life. That's what I can do for now. I have mixed feelings about the "poz pro" thing. I think there is a lot of genuine hrd work, and I think there is a great degree of manipulation and politics in this too, the poz and proud thing, the glam alternative. And there is corruption. At least here in the Netherlands there is a huge amount of it and it doesn't just amount to bad taste. It is on a criminal level. But I suppose for all these people, and for people in general, these are all ways of survival. I don't forgive them, but I know we are all holding on, some more desperately - and ruthlessly - than others. Some at the expense of other poz people, because they just don't care anymore. Because they can. Because they need to. Because we are fine on just getting barely by and on human companionship, and they are only fine with HIV if it includes trips abroad, five start resorts, cocktail parties, poz cruises, bareback orgies, huge houses, high salaries and even Botox treatments, all paid for at public expense from the government sponsored AIDS fonds, all paid for at our expense from money donated to women, to children, even to Africa. They have developed into a machine of greed and corruption, their "poz power" consists of levels of peer pressure to keep this momentum going, even as they are under scrutiny for the purposeful sex crimes and mass infection performed by 3 men, one of which is one of their active members. They can't break out of it anymore, and so I don't envy them. I'd rather make my own painstaking path.

Dedicated to my friends from Amsterdam.

The first stone

2007-07-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

It's been again ages since I wrote, once or twice I started a post and drafted them. The main excuse was my RSI, the secondary one was peripheral neuropathy playing havoc with my brain. I can be all relaxed doing my thing when all of a sudden a shooting painin my shins, or my feet feeling as numb as though they'd been wrapped in ice, or a tingling in my lips and tongue, or invisible spiders crawling of my limbs remind me that on paper I have AIDS and had it for a long time, that I am taking medications whose side effects are unknown but in any case not expected to be anything less than toxic, and that the poz guy on my corridor whom I see once in a while was using a walking stick the last time I saw him. Frankly, PN scares the shit out of me. Add to that the constant threat of lipo, the non-HIV related but still disturbing RSI with the doom's day warnings of my psyotherapist (yet another bulky, tall, bald, removed Dutch man) that if I don't "take care of it" I will not be able to work in a year or two, alone, and you will understand why the emotion which frequents me the most is panic.

And the other emotion is love. Of course, I panic about that too. We still don't know what will happen when P is done with his contract in Sep. The sand is not just trickling in the glass vial but falling rapidly towards the end. I am shit scared. So scared that I do untypical things like sign up for online tator readings 9at leats they are free). And every week I therefore get an interpretation of a card, which is supposed to reflect what I am going through (the wonders of the psychic powers of the internet, or maybe they just spy on my emails and concordance my most frequent vocabulary to custom fit it with a card?). How the mightty have fallen. From a reasonable reasonable person I have become this talkshow-guest like creature. I shamelessly want to tie my man to me, and I will do everything in my power to keep him. Well, everything but clean our shared apartment more regularly, or have sex when I want to sleep, or share a bed when I feel like reading alone. But yes, everything he asked for. Even not have children. Not that I have a choice. Ultimately, he will get to decide whether I leave this world with ancestors or not. I know that even if he wants to be a father with all his heart there is a chance we won't make it, but right now he finds the prospect terrifying! Well so do I. Honestly just the thought of having a screaming little bugger around makes me uncomfortable. But the thought of never having one makes me deeply despaired. So I suppose it comes down to that. On my part that is.

We are very happy, and no matter how deeply anxious I can get when I am alone or reading HIV+ forum (I have give up on the truly obnoxious Ynet forum; the alternative forum, although I don't use it and the professor who replies there is ultra-conservative on HIV transmittion - it almost seems like he has an agenda against young people enjoying a BJ here and there when he is stuck doing overtime and writing publications on weekends - at least does it with a direct and respectful manner. I have had it up to hear with the compliant way that the Ynet forum tiptoes around phobics and biggots), I always light up from within when I see P. He is the sunshine of my life, and my life, unfortunately, is pretty cloudy, although there are some things I deeply enjoy, like books, and some things I want to have, like a dog, but I can't get because everything is so uncertain. The tables could turn at any moment. In a few months I could find myself unable to walk properly. And in a few months if I am lucky the fucking Dutch beauricracy will allow me to be examined by a neurologist. Or maybe not. I had better hope to stay healthy, because the sicker you get, the more obstacles life places in your path. I am now at a point where I can very easily see how people become lost, alienated, addicted and even homeless when they have HIV. It's just so easy. To cast the first stone. People do it every single day and they don't even notice. Our whole system si built around exploiting and abusing the weak. Even in the poz world, the stonger poz prey on the weak, see the AIDS fonds and the hiv verejniging here in the Netehrlands. Money for orgies, cruises and resorts, taken at the expanse of refugees and children. And nobody knows and nobody cares.

The Fool

2007-07-16T13:15:00.000-07:00

For some obscure reason, I bumped into an tarot reading site and did an online reading. Since then I have been recieving a weekly lesson in tarot. This is not something I have ever been interested in, I am usually quite scared of people who dabble in anything psychic or astrological, not because I think they have some supernatural powers, just because I think that they might actually think that they do. Anyway this whole intro is apollogetically aimed at explaining the name of this post.
Apparently, the fool is the very first card, and it indicates "innocence", "naivety", and "no fear of new experiences or change". One should welcome the fool, unless it is the first card blind-picked from the deck. In that case, it indicates fickleness and immaturity.

I sit typing in our shared study (yes, we have finally, officially, moved in together as of two weeks ago) and it's raining cats and dogs outside, lightning flashes, wind gusts and all, after a brief warm spell following weeks and weeks of cold, drafty weather and enormous quantities of rain (following, in turn, a record-breaking dry spring). Yes the weather is going crazy, and it no longer appears prophetic or megalomanic to come up with doom's day scenarios of cities underwater at best and the end of the world as we know it at worst. It is almost dull to remark that, since Al Gore rendered global warming a smalltalk topic, at least on this side of the world. I am listening to the chilling Babel soundtrack as it is being downloaded from a guy/girl in Brazil. I am back from a week's vacation in Israel, decided on at the spur of the moment since I became unbearable homesick following the presidantial rape/harassment scandal. Don't know how that, of all things, made me homesick. I think it was having a lot to say and feeling a need for an outraged discussion and having no one to conduct it with. I tried explaining it to P., but it was just too Israeli. You had to see that girl-woman on TV, with her face pixeled and her shattered pride and dreams, with everything gone horribly, irreperably wrong, and the president in his smug, self-righteous fury, armed by a band of sharks-in-suits and making mincemeat out of her, and everyone else. Because he can. Not that I think for a minute that he raped her in the conventional sense of the word, violence and all, but in a way, it would have been better for her if he had, and not to have somehow mutely consented to pleasuring the oily old goat. The very thought of it makes me turn. Having sex against your will is extremely awful, but being coerced into changing your will is even worse, and if you do it because you have no choice while consoling yourself that you will get something out of it - status, appreciation, a name for yourself - and it all blows up in your face, and any pretence that you had of becoming something and making something out of your life becomes a sick, pathetic joke on you - because she was never smart enough, not even pretty enough, for that world of mega-deals and power junkies - and he knew that she knew that she was not what she wanted to become, and he smelled the easy prey and pounced on it, holding the reward it sight, and she relented, which makes her, some people, most people, say, some kind of whore. But I think that she reacted, and what choice did she have?

The revolution will not be televised

2007-06-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

I have severe RSI and am not supposed to write at all, so everyone tells me, the physiotherapist, the doctors, the work doctor. Today i cancelled a semniar to which I applied follishly just a couple days ago, mostly because the thought of having to prepare a presentation to a potentially very critical audience on top of my usual chores might leave me severly handicapped. I can't tell you how difficult it is not to write, even as I write this......

P. stuff is trickling into my apartment, and we live here, but it isn't yet official, it's two months already that he is in the process of moving. Today, my Ukrainian Jewish friend S. told me she will be married to her Dutch boyfriend. But she has a lot of doubts, mostly about the permanent seperation from her family that this would entail. I saw myself in her, although there is nothing I would like more than to marry P. & have his kid(s). We met my parents in Belgium the other weekend, and it was the first time that he had spent a substantial amount of time with them, and for me, that was heartbreaking: I only got to see my dad for one day, and I watched him and P. walking alongside each other, my dad looking so stooped and frail somehow next to P., although on paper he is taller! My mum has shrank too. When it was time to say goodbye and goodnight, I burst into tears. This was the first time I had cried upon leaving my parents. I cried because I am realizing that I might be forced into spending the rest of my life away from my parents, and also because I was too lazy to get up at 5.30 to say goodbye to my dad, who was taking a train at 6.00. Yes, I was too lazy to walk to the station with him. I was still taking Stokrin/Sustiva at the time (I have since switched to Viramune, my 3rd switch in a year and a half), and that might be a lame excuse, but I just couldn't envision my self rising. Sleep is so precious to me. Or rather, without a sufficient amount of it I am a zombie. How the hell can I envision parenthood then, I don't know.

So it took a lot from me to cancel that thing in the UK, but now it's over and cancelled. It's all about prioritizing, my chronic disease psychologist at the hospital whom I see once monthly said today. I guess I am prioritizing by sacrifycing my arm writing this rather than on my job.

Finally, to justify the title of this post, I came across this book about AIDS in fiction, movies and TV today. It's quite an old book, from the early 90's, and I forgot who wrote it, so there will be a bit of plagiarism here. I didn't read the whole book but one part about TV really caught my eye. It said there that until AIDS came along, gays were always portrayed on TV as the straight soceity's problem. The very fact that gays need to "come out" and that most gay related mainstream TV dealt with the coming out process, and how the all-American suburban family embraces the gay son, assumes the being gay is a secret that is at best accepted. Adding AIDS into this narrative in the 80's resulted in "disease of the week" type dramas in which the clean cut, well educated, well paid gay individual or couple reveals the horrific result of his "lifestyle", ending in imminent tragic death, which is portrayed, again, in the way that it affects the "healthy society" - parents, friends, collegues. This is when dramas even dared to venture into the "dirty" (and common) HIV infection narrative, because there was an abudance of the clean-infection types stories (via transfusion). In any case, anytime AIDS was on TV, it cost the networks advertising money; meanwhile we have to consider (this is not what the book said but I thought) that HIV/AIDS is the first major televised epidemic, and in the consciousness of the vast majorty of the public, this drama/movie image is what it is all about. As with the gay issue, AIDS is always about the effects of "disclosure" on the healthy ones - parents, friends, collegues, partners - who themselves, naturally, cannot be possibly at any risk for HIV! Moreover, the social, political, face of AIDS, the fact that it is a true epidemic spreading through all layers of society, was so terrifying to the media (and whoever is in charge of it), that the major US networks preferred even to depict gay coupledom, while keeping the epidemic marginalized at the level of individuals suffering as a result of their irresponsible, flawed actions (and still semi-embraced by the forgiving straight society), and risk outrage from mainstream (read: Christian rightrous) viewers, to revealing the Truth: HIV is here to stay; get used to it and teach your pre-pubescent kids about it, because by the time they are in high school, they will need to know how to get and use a condom.
Considering that this book was written in '93, I find that things have progressed pathetically slowly, if at all. Just consider the last TV infection story, which had its own forum in AIDSmeds. I know it has been debated a lot and want to use it just as an example, at least those 80s clean infection dramas were realistic in the sense that this is how infection happened in some cases back in those days, it wasn't just some aobscure "immaculate infection" (to quote an AIDSmeds user).

Yes, HIV is still the disease of the "others", and so it was to me, until I found out that I had it. And even though I am still not sure how I got it, and even though I consider myself to have been sexually responsible, I don't want to have an immaculate infection. I can't say that I identify with double penetration and fisting stories, but I am not the Virgin Mary. I love sex, and I don't obssess about it as long as I get it regularly, and this is not a contradiction in terms. I am not dirty, nor clean. I don't have an infection story to tell, I just have shreds and suspicions, but in this sweeping epidemic, aren't all stories the same? Instead of focusing on isolating HIV people and insinuating our seperation from society, in a way that no other - infectious or not - sickness was isolated in the modern era, we should be getting a narrative that emphasizes that we are the very fabric of society, and we are not going anywhere because a virus has entered our bloodstream, whether it happened in a mass orgy or in a blood transfusion is completely irrelevant, what is insanely relevant is the enforcement of abstinence, the lack of affordable medication and treatment, and the lack of acceptance of the fact that poz people are part of society, just like people with cancer, Parkinson's or gingivitis are.

No one........

2007-05-30T03:09:00.000-07:00

I posted this on aidsmedsunder the title How I was diagnosed, disclosed, and met my boyfriend. I am up straight more than 24 hours working nonstop, losing circulation in my legs from sitting, ankles swollen, I took a couple hours and wrote this, cried and shook some. I kept going back and revising, finally this embarassed me, so I put the full version here. Maybe I should update there too, what the hell....

No one told me to get a HIV test. Because I am a woman, I have a good job, I look good, i don't do drugs, I don't fuck around and had good boyfriends with good jobs. I should mention that I used condoms almost all the time, even in long relationships, because I didn't like taking birth control pills, I thought they were not healthy. I knew about HIV. I talked about it, I asked every person I ever slept with about it, was careful not to have sperm in my mouth (sorry if this is too much information). I only had unprotected sex with 3 guys, longterm boyfriends in the last 10 years (and before that was tested and two years celibate, then tested again without having sex). Even with my boyfriends, unprotected sex was rare, because like I said I was not on the pill.I started having small infections that didn't go away, candida that resisted treatment, sores that didn't heal, bumps on my skin, bleeding gums, nose bleeds, dry skin, ulcers. hairdressers commented that I must be eating poorly, the dental hygenist accused me of neglecting my gums, elthough I floss daily. Small things, nothing serious. This went on for a few years. Got slowly worse. Some syptoms went away, came back, all of a sudden I had all of them, as well as watery diarrearah that went on for months, but by that time I was used to it. I was used to the fatigue, I was used to feeling strange, it became a part of me, I thought that this is just my disposition.After a long lonely period, and more than a year without sex at all, I met a guy in the Netherlands, fell in love, we planned to move in together, I notified my landlord and flew home to see my family for 2 weeks. I had a routine blood test at the clinic, as I did every year (at the time, not being insured in the Netherlands), my white cells were even lower, despite a year of taking B12 supplement. The clinic wss packed with sick people, it being january. The nurse, a Russian matron, complained that I have just on entry point. I laughed. "One is enough", I said. In love, glowing, invincible. She shook her head knowingly, "one is NOT enough, you will see one day". I went to the gynecologist, he knows me since the abortion I had 9 years before (I switched gynecologists after that previous one prescribed a contraception that didn't work and I got pregnant and all he did when I returned was shrug and refer me to an abortion). I told him my candida just doesn't go away despite treatment, he had a look, told me it was fine. I told him, my BF doesn't believe that candida is harmless, is afraid of getting it, can you write me a reference? He laughed. He said, I can write you anything you want, bring it over, I'll sign it. Candida is normal, sometimes goes out of control, can't pass to your BF, but if he wants to use a cream, no harm in that if it makes him feel better. There is nothing wrong with you. Wanting to surprise my BF, I asked for a Pill prescription, I thought, the candida will clear and we make the love of the century in a month from now. I said, can you give me a reference for a HIV test?I looked at the reference, I realized that the result would arrive when I'd be back in the Netherlands. I decided to wait and get tested with my BF. We were talking about testing together, making a day of it, it seemed romantic. My dad is a doctor. He knows the doctor who referred me to the blood tests. She called him, expressed her concerns, said I should retest before I leave, maybe it's a mistake, maybe... she didn't want to say cancer, but it was understood, as they are both doctors. My dad, although a doctor, actually because he is a doctor, doesn't like to be involved with family health, since for years we have accused him of being a nagging worrywart. He told me I should get retested. I was like, leave me alone, i am going back in 5 days, I can't be bothered, there is nothing wrong with me, I am fine, always fine. I ate raw meat in Burma, I slept in a Thai jungle, I swam in the Mekong, I never bothered taking anti-malarias, I bounced back from dengue fever. Nothing happens to me.He said, I will do it myself, please (remember we are not talking about HIV at all, just a bunch of counts).I didn't want to do another test. I was childish, stubborn. The next evening I was in a bar with a friend, I looked in the mirror, I thought, "something is wrong with you, you don't look right". It was not because of the blood results, I didn't even think of that. It was something in my face. Something in how I felt, as though I was not actually there, as though something was happening to me, my face in the mirror looked transparent, not pale, but as though I was somehow not there, I felt like a ghost, like I was slipping away, fading out, I even said to my friend, I don't feel right. Oh, are you tired, catching a flu? No I am not, and I didn't feel sick either (and no, I didn't drink, was driving that night).I left a note for my dad, next morning, he woke me up at 7.00 to take my blood (I have tears in my eyes as I type this). I was sleepy and grumpy. He was amazingly skilled and gentle (and I have awful veins as i mentioned). As he was about to leave for work, I said, Oh, dad, can you ask them to send it also for HIV? My dad looked embarassed, as any man would be in such a situation with his daughter I supposed. I swallowed my embarassment, because I knew it would take a long while to short out the Dutch insurance and that I couldn't test with the doctor reference and get the result soon enough. I needed my dad's contacts to get a rapid result. I didn't ask for HIV because I thought I was positive, I was sure that I wasn't positive. I wasn't nervous, and after my dad left I went back to bed and slept. i woke up at 10.00. My mum told me that my dad called, and that I should call Dr. X after 13.00 and he would have the result. She didn't know what result it was. I wasn't sure if it was the HIV, or all of the results. I was not worried about my health, I did the counts as a courtesy to my dad, I didn't want to leave him worried. I did the HIV as a gift to my boyfriend and to myself.At 12.00, I got nervous. I have a photo album in my childhood room. I looked at the pictures, me all over the place, friends, boyfriends. I looked at me, I started looking at the guys. I got nervous, but I knew that I had safe sex with them, mostly. I still was nervous. I went downstairs, opened the fridge, got somehow annoyed with my poor mum, couldn't stay at home. Took the keys to her car, drove off. Stopped two minutes later to call and apologize, said I was taking a drive. Called my friend from the bar, but he wasn't home. Drove to his home somehow, not thinking, stopped the car in a bus stop, opposite the beach, dense noontime traffic. January, but a hot day. It was 13.01, called the number.A secretary. She called him. He took long minutes to arrived. I realized that my heart was thumping, my throat was dry, my body was tense, I feel it now as I type.His voice on the phone, sounding strange. He called me by a wrong name, and I corrected him, as though that mattered. I could almost count the seconds, and then I heard it."Can you come here, we need to do another test?".I don't remember what I told him. I understood, I tried to beg him to tell me. He refused. I cried, insisted, he refused. he gives me instructions, I ask him to repeat, he repeats, I register nothing. I drive there, not knowing how, not knowing my way, through the narrow streets, the dense traffic, hooting cars, traffic lights, pedestrians crossing everywhere, like a lunatic, I could have had 20 accidents, I was smoking, although my mum doesn't allow smoking in the car, I was shaking, I was praying. I was repeating the same line of a prayer again and again, I am not religious, I don't know any prayers save for this one...My hands are shaking so much as I type this, I can barely strike the keyboard.At the entrance of the hospital, cars converge into a line for the security checks. I stop, dazed. I pray. I smoke. I mutter to myself. A taxi driver, fuming at the mouth, gets out of the car and all but hits me, cursing me for falling asleep at the wheel. Bystanders look on, the security guards say nothing. I drive past them, past him. I want to say something, but I can't.I don't find a parking spot, the hospital is a city within a city, cars, ambulances, visitors, patients in pygamas, families, old people, children, I am alone, I have AIDS, I am a ghost.I somehow find a spot in a lot behind the hospital, by sheer chance not denting the car. I leave it there and run. I wander around the huge complex, can't find the ward. I go to the information desk, there is a man and a pregnant woman, I want to be them, I want to be anybody on that floor, any dying patient, anyone but me.The information desk clerk gives me a knowing look, explains, I walk, I reach the place, I am buzzed in.The doctor is religious. He looks like a Rabbi. He is old. He is not what I expected. A nurse comes, they let me sit in a big arm chair, it is a room with hospital beds. I am in a hospital, I real hospital. there are IVs, there are sheets, there is the smell.... One minute I am in love, I am so happy, I become a woman, finally like all the others. In a second, this. I have crossed over.They take my blood again, I am shaking like I have never seen anyone shake, shaking like a tree in a storm, I don't know how they manage, they have to grab hold of my arm together while my body just palpitates, it is like epilepsy.The worst thing is, they won't look me in the eye.They explain that sometimes there could be a mistake in the lab. Wrong name on the sticker.But my DAD wrote the sticker!He doesn't look at me. There are procedures....I ask him if he believes in miracles, I try to catch his eye. A miracle for me is keeping my boyfriend, that's all I can think about. I don't think about AIDS. I don't think about health. I think, no one will love you again. I think, God hates you. He says that of course he does, I am making him uncomfortable, he looks like he wants to run out of there.They ask me if I want to drink. I am collapsed, crying like a child, folded over. They ask me if I want to call someone. I call my boyfriend, but I don't have calls abroad. I call my mum, because I just took off with her car for 3 hours. She sounds normal, not worried at all. In a second I shatter that. I whisper, "mum, I am at the hospital, the result is not good"."Not good...", she repeats slowly, trying to understand."They want to do another test, but the results are not good", I say. I hate myself, I have never ever hated myself so much. I want to die because I am dropping this on her, and I want to die because of the slight relief that flashes for a second."I will call dad", she says, "don't worry, he will come. Where are you?"I tell her. She calls my dad.The nurse asks me if I want to lie. I lie on one of the beds, a hospital bed. The sheets are cool, she covers me with a blanket, turns off the light. She strokes my back, pulls curtains around the bed, then leaves and closes the door. I am huddled in the bed, my knees against my chest. I am crying. I am alone in a hospital bed in a dark room on the second floor of a huge hospital, I have HIV, the sun is shining outside, people are crowding the streets, and my life is gone, I am nothing, I disappear into a dot, I might even fall asleep, and then my dad enters. He opens the curtain and bends over and hugs me while I am curled in that bed, I cannot remember my dad hugging me in a bed, not even when I was little, I cannot remember my dad hugging me while I cried. One second I am a woman, going about my business in the big wide world, the next I am this, I have slipped back to a time I can't even remember.I am so thankful he is there.They come in the room, whispering, turn on the lights. I am summoned for a Western Blot, the second Eliza was positive, no surprise there.A WB takes 2 days to get back from the lab, but because I am due to fly back in 3 days (and move in with my boyfriend!!! my head screams. And be finally fucking normal for the first time in my life!!!), they draw blood also for a CD4 count and VL. I don't feel the needle pricks, I don't feel a thing.I take my dad's mobile and call my boyfriend. I tell him. He stutters. I tell him that the doctor said that he will be fine, we had sex with a condom.I can't recall this conversation, but it is a lost cause. Perhaps I can't recall it because he is not important anymore, thank God. But at that moment. All I think about is him. I call him again from the car, and my dad stops on the highway. We talk, and all I care is about calming him down. It is not possible, and that day he throws out all my clothes.When we reach the house, my mum is standing inside, looking lost, looking as though she just stood there since I made that phone call. The three of us hug in a small, tight circle. We stand like that for a while, choking, and then we break up. It is as though a bomb was thrown into the house, it is as though someone had died. Every detail in the house is illuminated and charged, as though I have been blind but now I see. This is it. Reality. I have been oblivious, but now I know.My dog is still alive, she is 18 and she is blind and deaf and looks like an arthritic black rat, and she still has some blind instinct to stumble out of her basket and approach me. And thank God that she is still there, because all the nights, every night, that I cannot sleep, I go to the basket where she lies, breathing heavily, wrapped in a smelly towel, and I bend over and stroke her and tears stream freely onto my face, and that is the only time my muscles are not contracted, my jaw is not set.The next day I go to the hospital with my parents. I haven't slept all night, just chain smoked. They didn't either. The Western Blot isn't in yet, but the CD4 result is. I have 77. I have 20,000 VL. I am told that I have had HIV for a long long time, I am at the edge of the abyss and the doctor won't let me fly back, but I insist. He gives me prescriptions, I talk about my BF. I am demanding and insistent, obnoxious even. I make him go with me to the roof where there is better mobile reception and call my BF. He tries to calm him down, he tells him I can have healthy children. He tells him he will not have HIV because we were safe, he is sure of it. He invites him to come over and be tested now (it is almost New Year and everything is closed in the Netherlands, his doctor told him he would have to wait for weeks for a result). My dad wants to fly him over, I spent yesterday's afternoon booking a flight for him, at an exorbitant holiday season, last-minute rate, but he refuses. He refuses to talk to me, but he is happy to talk to a doctor. The doctor tells me, eyes again averted, that if my BF will not support me, maybe he shouldn’t be my BF. I vehemently defend him. I am filth, he is my only redemption. I fight for my right to be humiliated. I fight to get on a plane. They explain that I might get sick from the Combivir and dizzy from the Sustiva, that airplanes are not ventilated, that Europe is freezing and I have no health insurance there, that I could catch any number of things, that I am very lucky to be still walking around. To their credit, they don’t mention the fact that I am already an AIDS patient. They refer me to an eye doctor, to a chest x-ray, to an EKG, to this and that. On each application, it says HIV. One each application, there is a yellow sticker with a red biohazard symbol. They vaccinate me against the flu and PCP, and start me on heavy antibiotics. I have to take them until further notice, if I don’t take them, I will die. They keep mentioning how lucky I am. They keep saying “another day, another week, and you would have been severely ill”. I don’t hear them. They keep saying what sheer luck I had to be accidentally diagnosed like this, and wish that I had collapsed and died on the street in the Netherlands, and spent the rest of my days in a coma.

They get their way. I call the airline and delay my flight by another week. I send the first of many emails, canceling things I was supposed to do that week.It is the hardest week of my life so far. I call my boyfriend every day, sometimes more than once. He never calls or emails. The calls get worse and worse. He says I should forget him. He says that he loves me, but that it is over. He says that I should call my landlord and tell him I am not leaving after all. He says that I should stay away and take care of my health. He says that he is not strong enough, and that someone else will appreciate me. I laugh bitterly at this. Between calls, I sit on the porch and smoke, wearing the same clothes. Whenever a neighbor passes by, I crouch to avoid detection. I don’t eat. When I turn on the TV, I see couples and families and freedom and health and potential, all the things I don’t have. When I open the newspaper I see the same. I access The Body for the first time. It is depressing, gray and gloomy, packed full of sinister information. I look through the Ask the Experts section. It brings no consolation. The answers are matter of fact, the terminology immense. I write love in the search box. I get a few hits, but nothing that I have a use for. One evening, when my parents are away, I call a mental crisis hotline, talking quietly as if someone was listening. A middle aged volunteer answers. My problem is too difficult, she all but hangs up, wishes me health. I call an ASO. A guy answers. He is friendly but distant. I imagine he is gay. I wish I was gay. Then I wouldn’t be alone. I wish I was a lesbian, then I wouldn’t get this. I wish I were dead. I start imagining jumping off buildings, overdosing on pills. These are soothing thoughts. Ironically, they keep me alive. The option of death is the only thing that makes life just slightly less unbearable.

The initial closeness I had with my parents evaporates. My dad goes to work every day, comes home late, but my mum is there almost all day, every day, and she can’t look at me. I can’t look at her either. I move between their rooms, go out, smoke, come back, open the fridge, take something, eat, put it back, go out, smoke. This is the house I grew up in. I should have become something, I almost became something, I stumbled and fell so many times, got my life together, and now look at me. I am ashamed, ridden with guilt. I know that I am breaking my parents. When they go to bed, I breathe a relief, staying up until the morning. I steal Xanax and Lorezepam from my dad’s drawer, but I don’t take them, I just hoard them. I am still struggling. I think about my boyfriend constantly, every second. As tormented as I am by his rejection, to the point that I sometimes feel as though I my loins are crushed, I somehow know that if this agony diminishes, something far worse will take hold. I get tastes of it whenever I try to sleep. The daytime restlessness and misery are nothing compared to the hollow, screaming panic that visits me at night. I get up, drink milk and smoke. Check on the dog and smoke, walk around in circles, pray that my parents are sleeping. I sometimes hear one of them get up and know that they sleep poorly, if at all. If one of them goes downstairs during the night, I am filled with resentment. I am trapped in this house, I am trapped in this life, in this body, and the only thing keeping me alive is my guilt towards them.

I fly to the Netherlands on a night flight, leaving at 03.00, completely disoriented with Sustiva, sitting next to a couple with a baby, I will never have a baby. The baby sleeps quietly, it looks like an angel. I am one of a kind on this plane. I am not alive. I am a ghost. I am unable to leave Amsterdam airport, I walk around in a daze while the airport fills with the bustle of the morning's travelers. I cannot get on the train. I cannot leave. I cannot talk to anyone. Finally I call my friend in another town and ask to come over. I take trains, smoking illegally on the platforms with teenagers, talking, but dead. I can’t listen to music or read or sleep, so I just sit and stare at the world, seeing nothing, being nothing. She picks me up at her town's station, takes me to her house, her 3 children. I will never have children. I smoke in the garden. The children are unusually quiet and well behaved. They feel something. For a brief moment, I collapse and cry hoarsly on her shoulder while the children look, wide eyed, amazed, innocent. A neighbour is summoned to look after my friend's kids together with her own while my friend takes me on a taxi and the train to my destination. She looks at me, and there is no small talk. It is the heart of suburbia and I am outcast. I have lost all chance of ever even pretending that I could fit in there. My friend brings me to the apartment I was supposed to evacuate. The matress on the floor, the tiny room, the footsteps of the couple upstairs, a coffin for 350 Euro a month. I stay away from work, the city is empty and freezing, I sleep fitfully, I chain smoke, I call my BF, not referring to him as my ex yet, and he comes around, kisses me with clenched lips, takes off his clothes and some of mine and runs away, disgusted. He screens my calls, he switches off his phone. I walk to his place in the freezing darkness, he doesn't open the door. I fly home. I chainsmoke and tell my friends. Speak to my brother, who knows from my parents, for the first time. I get retested, my cells are at 130, VL 600. I meet some AIDS activists, I meet a positive guy with lipo and a lust for life, I meet poz men online, and start a witty, uplifting correspondence with a middle aged American. I am scared shitless of going back. I cancel a lot of stuff from work. I come back 2 weeks later. Again a night flight. Still no insurance. Handback packed full with meds, I am stopped by customs. I tell the young officer I have a chronic disease, he backs off apollogetically. I go to see an apartment that night, it is freezing, I am tired and jetlagged from a Sustiva night flying. The guy who is leaving appears on his bicycle. We go upstairs to the room. It's in an attic overlooking a canal. The house is shared. I cannot face new people. I cannot live in this buidling occupied by young careless ambitious hopefilled people. I am too tired to leave, so I stay, have a tea, bumm a cigarette. He is Spanish, older than me, big, warm, funny. We don't talk about anything, but we communicate. He makes me call my landlord and tell him I am staying yet another month. He makes it simple. I am scared of my landlord, he told my previous roommate that if she doesn't evaccuate he will put her stuff on the street and change the locks, and while I was gone put a new girl in the apartment. He is a big bully, but the private housing market is tiny and the demand is huge, it is not just a question of money. It is a question of money, willpower and luck, which is not on my side.I walk the long way back to my room, through the city, past the park. I put my mobile on the desk. The room is dark, the house is empty. There is no one to call. There is nothing to do. No internet. No TV. My hand reaches to the phone. Without thinking, without feeling, I call the Spanish guy. He sounds surprised. I don't know what to say, I don't even know why I called. I hear myself saying: "do you want to go out sometime?".

Tunnel vision

2007-05-27T08:50:00.000-07:00

1) Why did it hurt?

Yesterday was an "off" day. I couldn't meet, or even talk, to anyone other than P., and felt like I am alone in the world. Sometimes I want to call someone, but there is no one, I look at the contact list on my phone and it is incredibly short, but I admit that it is partially, or even wholly, my own making. It is me who isolated myself all those years, and continue to do so. It is not that P. isn't enough, he is great - he even gave me flowers the other day, the most beautiful roses I have ever seen (pic to be uploaded soon), and we can talk, laugh, debate, about everything and anything. But sometimes I miss having other people in my life. Not because something is missing between the two of us but because I need to know that there are more people out there looking out for me, and I for them.

Anyway, I was again faced with a beautiful day and the feeling that I have nowhere to go and nothing to do but turn to the net. After a short Skype chat with my brother, in which I was aware of my sister in law presence in the background, which made me guiltily uncomfortable, a feeling which I tried compensate for that by indirectly addressing her through my conversation with him, I tried to think if I want to go to the UK for a presentation in just over a month. My brother invited me to stay with them en route to my destination, to break up the long train-flight-train haul, and was at the opinion that I should go ahead and present, because it's always better to do something than spend energy on debating it within yourself (and anyway, he said, it is always better to do something that to refrain from doing it; energy spent is energy returned, in other words). I know, or rather fear, that I will be super-nervous if I decide to go and apply for the funds and the thing itself, and also be stressed, on top of my performace and travel anxieties, with the "mizing business with pleasure" aspect, in the sense that staying at my brother's for a couple days prior might tax me emotionally: what if I don't sleep well, what if I am again overwhelmed by the tensions of their wierd relationship, and my own barely disguised impatience and distrust of eher (actually of the both of them, when they are together), and what of they are inconsiderate and I end up resenting them bitterly, like I did in my last home visit (despite my inner struggle with this hostility). And what if they are accomodating and supportive and wonderful, but I am nevertheless tormented by my own demons, and have no one to blame?
And what it I don't dare to venture, and continue to stew in my own doubts and fears, how will I feel then, knowing that I wanted to do something but couldn't get over myself, is surrender even an option anymore, after all I have been through?

2) Today I cycled to the new branch of my gym chain, which is in that part of town that I was supposed to move to with Z., and join him in his long-awaited housing corporation two room apartment, in the third floor of a cement row of low-rise apartments over looking a wide canal and a few factory warehouses, on the edge of town it seemed. I didn't know how to cycle then, and having tried many times and failed, also when taught by a couple of boyfriends, I reconciled to the idea that I can always hold my parents to blame for the fact that no one had bothered to teach me to cycle as a child (and in general, I was pretty much neglected until the age of 6 or so, when my mum started taking me to special classes for gifted children, but by then it was too late, and by age 7 I was referred to a psychologist, who made me talk about my fear of clouds and draw pictures, but I am digressing wildly here). I didn't know how to cycle, but I was obssessed with moving in with Z. and proving to the world, and to myself, that I was a normal 31 year old girl woman involved in a relationship and living with a man! Z.'s nasty, grease coated place before he got the new apartment was even further off, to the opposite direction, and I used to get there after long days at work and hours working at punitively perfecting my body at the gym, in the dark, icy cold, howling November nights by two busses from the city center where I worked. Since the walls in the makeshift "house milking" scheme I was sharing for an exaggurated rent [I was not and still am not a wooning corporatie - subsudized rent corporation - member, so I was, and will be as long as I stay in the Netherlands, at the mercy of the mostly merciless private housing sector]. I was adamant though to do what it takes to get, and keep, Z., who seemed to me the most beautiful man on Earth at the time. I accepted his sexual deviances, even though I knew that he was objectifying me, but I made the separation between how he was in the bed and how he was literally a couple of feet away, on the couch watching TV or in the insanely filthy kitchenette - which I had spent hours one day scrubbing thoroughly while he was working out. I accepted that my life had take such a turn, that I had found myself - yet again, and in complete accordance with my personal narrative - stranded in a strange unwelcoming place with no friends and no one to give a flying fuck or even know what is going on with me.

3) Z. was a homophobic, and I recall one debate about gays, can't remember how it started, whether it was provoked by a movie we saw or whatever, in which he became quite insolent, and gave off a strong message that I had crossed the red line with my provocation. No hang on, I think he mentioned that once a guy had tried to pick him up at a bar, though very subtly, just smiling or chatting him up or something like that, and how horribly repulsed he was by it. And then I said that he should have take it as a compliment, and that just infuriated him, and he was sulking and I was - unbelievably, but quite in line with the self-depreciating way in which I let myself be handled by men in my early years in "the game"; I had broken out of the pattern, but the loneliness of the last years and the devestation after O. had cheated on me and that whole disaster, which I won't go into right now, had made me lose all esteem, and to a certain extent with B., and much more with Z., I let myself be repeatedly humiliated. I was just so... fucking... tired... of... being... alone.

4) So Z. got the promised proposal to better his housing, after 4 years of waiting in the beaurocratic bottleneck of the housing corporation, and although he had said that I should move in with him when he got the new place as soon as our second date, and although the idea of him moving in with me - instead of my roommate, who was going back to Italy - he didn't bring it up. I was so distraught that I spent a lengthy amount of time discussing it with R., and even with my nosy, annoying, obnoxious then-roommate at work, who pounced on my troubles like a famished boar. I ended up having a very tense phone conversation with him in which nothing was said directly, and then we met that evening in a nastly little doner kebab joint downtown, and somehow the conversation took a turn, and it became clear that we were, after all, about to move in together, after little over a month since getting to know each other. I remember how thrilled, and victorious, and yet inexplicably tense - I was terrified of him having a sudden change of heart - I was as I was waiting for him to get back, since after that dinner he took off to see the place, and I was killing time by playing pool with R. I even dropped my mobile into a pile of planks next to the table, and had given up on finding it and called Z. from R.'s mobile, telling him my mobile is gone (me and R. later managed somehow to retrieve it).

I have to go jogging before dinner, so I will leave this now...
To be continued....

The power of love

2007-05-24T08:49:00.000-07:00

This post has been simmering for the last days, I have been meaning to write it, but didn't find time to, or when I did, didn't quite find the words. Finally, I am at work after another unremarkable did in which I hardly worked at all (save for a budget related meeting and drafting a letter), there is great weather outside, P. is off somewhere, presumably playing pool, and the building seems to be quite. Everybody's gone off to enjoy the weather, which, typically, should only last TILL the weekend...

But what I have been thinking, or rather feeling, that is just so hard to explain. A kind of overwhelming thankfulness, peacefullness, despite the imperfections of things, a gratefuleness that I have a partner (!) who doesn't make a fuss about sleeping apart most nights (because we sleep better that way, even though now we share the same apartment), who is always smiling and seems to be in a good mood, who spent an hour yesterday helping me to dye the gray roots of my hair in the careful way in which men seem to treat any task that they are facing, only to find out that he forgotten about and missed the UEFA cup final and that Milan won, poor guy! who is going to drive with me to Gent next weekend to meet my parents, then back up here with my mom, who went to the huisartz and asked for a HIV test just like that, saying that his girlfriend is positive, as though that was the most natural thing in the world (it should be, but I know that it isn't) and is again doing the whole STD panel, just not to put me at risk, who says it is just as good with condoms as it is without and means it, who is warm and cuddly and big and strong and patient and funny, who takes care of me when I am sick and cleans the oven and cooks whenever I don't, who makes love to me on a regular basis but is not oversexed, and is the most irresistable combination of masculinity and patience, who is .... Godamn it, I am just SO IN LOVE with this guy. And I don't love him because of the things he does for me or the things he does for the relationship, I love him for what he is, I love him for his little hangups too, I love him for being laidback and sloppy and imperfect, I love him for not being a metrosexual, and for not thinking that anything is a big deal, and for listening, and for laughing, and for teasing, and for being honest about what he can and cannot do. This is just a small random sample of the things I love about P., because like all of us he is a whole greater than the sum of his parts. This is the real deal, and it's not nearly as dramatic or painful as I thought it would be. Any stress in our relationship is injected by external components such as the temporary nature of our emloyment and the fact that he might have to relocate. But the love itself is just so calm, warm, and essential, that it makes everything easier. It makes me forget that I am sick, it makes me forget that I am what many might consider a fuckup and a lost cause, it makes me live with my flaws, and his, and those of the world, in real acceptance. I don't know if it is like this because I learned to accept that love is not perfect and it shouldn't be, or that my own pain and hunger are not things I should fight but should accept, or that what is growing between me and P., that essence, is what gives me this power, and what enables me to reach out to others, whether they are friends, collegues, or strangers on the net, without exuahsting my resources, with accepting my limitations, with just being what I am, as I am....

What's new pussycat?

2007-05-23T01:37:00.000-07:00

The clock is ticking towards 11.00, I am home, in my bathrobe, unshowered, after a too-big breakfast (bowl of oatmeal followed by muesli and milk, double dose of confort food). Trying not to stress, to stiffle the panic that comes with every new day.

I have take to writing on forums as I mentioned here. Yesterday one of the participants asked what we like to do, in our spare time, to take the mind off, to unwind. I gave a long list of things that I like, things that I do. But I don't do them enough, hardly ever, I do other things. And that's fine too I guess. The forums. Making love this morning, both of us late for work. Raquetbal in the park. The weather improving. Still too fat. Weighed in at the docs a couple weeks ago, I hadn't gained as much weight as i previously thought, but enough to change me, the standards for women are higher.

And yet there is another side, developing simultaneously, realizing that it really, really dones't matter, what we look like, this stupid race. Still scared shitless of lipo and deformation, but able to envion other satisfactions in life than presenting one's self in a nice package to be viewed. Another dimension.

I didn't write for so long, and there were more presentations - speaking of presenting one's self. On one occasion, I was sleep deprived for a few prior days and ended up taking a tranquilizer in the A.M. Since I was scheduled to speak first, I still didn't fully wake up. Didn't exactly stutter, but long words were inarticulate, my voice sounding heavy and my tongue feeling rough and oversized in my mouth. I got through it though. Good feedback too. Not perfect, but it didn't matter.

I went to Venice with P. Romantic holiday, anticipation. First trip together abroad. Rented apartment near the Realto Bridge, checking the weather forecast frantically, low average rainfall in Venice in May, but it all seemed to fall during those five days. Stress. When we got there, a long day of downpours. Wet shoes, chilly draft winds. It didn't matter, we snuck into the Doges Palace, drank scorching hot choclate under dripping canapes, watched the decaying city cringe under the torrents, more heartbreaking and beautiful than last time. And then the sun emerged, 3 days of beautiful weather till we left. Not too hot. Just perfect. A perfect backdrop, in which all the crevices and wounds of the city are revealed, obvious, unapologetic, heartbreakingly beautiful in their imperfection.

How I changed since diagnosis

2007-05-20T23:19:00.000-07:00

Now that I gave the title (always a mistake, better to write first, caption later), I feel somewhat like a kid about to write the "what I did last summer" essay. But I know I have changed a great deal. Recently, I have been using HIV forums a lot, where I get get pretty much instant feedback and respond to others. But there is a limit to the amount of self-centeredness that these forums can take I guess. And I guess me realizing that is also part of the change.

I used to be very self centered. I based my whole image and worth on how others percieved me, or rather, how I percieved others to percieve me. I objectified myself, I objectified others. I was always calculating, subtly, who had the upper hand. My relationships were based on my needs and my needs only, and for that reason, ironically, they didn't fulfll them. I was constantly hungry, for appreciation, for praise, for gratification, for sucess, for sex (that is not to say I was a 24/7 nympho, but I couldn't go through a day without thinking about sex; I know sex is a biological need, and in that sense I haven't reached my prime, but it was not about that, it was about the same instinct that tells women that they are nothing if they are not sexy and sexual).
There is one word for how I was: egocentric. I still am, but less. You only miss it when you lose it, you only realize you were not seeing others when you start seeing them, and, ironically, this leaves room for you. In the space between you and the others, who are finally Real, there is room to breathe, to operate.

I could write more but I have to rush to work and to a meeting with T the social worker.

The pursuit of happiness

2007-04-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

Not long ago I watched The Pursuit of Happiness which for a Will Smith film was very good. Erase that.... It was a good film period and he acted incredibly well. At the end of the movie Will's character, ingratiated to his wits' end, is overwhelmed with happiness, can barely restrain himself from breaking down in the midst of a crowded street, because he has finally landed a secure job and his able to take care of his son, after going through the hell of slipping down the American capitalist structure without a safety net, all the way down to the bottom, as can happen.

Today I remembered this when my friend M., who has also been going through the rough times of an unknown, insecure future, came to my room, flushed, almost teary eyed, and said that she had been offered a job in one of the most beautiful cities on earth, which happens to be in her native country. But M. didn't allow herself to become overwhelmed with relief and happiness - for what is happiness but relief and deactivation of worry, as any heroin addict can attest. She said that she needs to think things through, needs to take time to think if this is what she really wants. Which is fair enough, something better might come along (although I can't imagine what that could be). But I could still see the happiness ebbing there under the surface, frightening in its immensity.

And this is what I have been feeling, a deep overwhelming happiness that threatens to spill over, and which I am cautious, no, even frightened, of giving into, for fear of the Uknown and of Hybris or a misstep that would send it all crushing, as if it was one of these terrible dreams in which all problems are solved, loved ones come back from the dead. The last time I felt so overwhelmed with the threat of manic happiness, the kind that makes you want to skip down the street and shed tears, was when I got my job. It was relief back then, because I didn't want to go home, I had a terrible dread of going back and starting over, even though I had been through an inferno of loneliness and despair after I started this job, and that was not even following my diagnosis, which only happened 4 months into it. In these for months I had managed to meet Z., fall in love in a somewhat desperate fashion with a very unsuitable person, something which nevertheless I can't deny, plan to move in with him and become diagnosed with an advanced, perilious stage of the most stigmatizing, humiliating disease there is.

And now it is 3 days since P. moved in, although he still hasn't officially quit his place but his bed, TV and DVD are here and this is our new and temporary house. And we both have to get through one presentation in a couple of days, and then it's Venice, and I am so fucking happy it scares the living daylights out of me. I am so terrified something could go wrong, and I wish I could enjoy the moment, but the moment is too big for me to enjoy. Instead of giving in to the warm waves of relief and happiness, I focus on grieveinces: a possible development of neuropathy, an obssession with my disease, an obssession with what people think about my disease, and obssession with all the projudice and igonorance and hate there is. It's as though the negativity is a protective barrier from something so terrifying that I daren't name or think of, parhaps being left alone, perhaps natural or manmade disaster. In tragedies the audience always sees it coming and the hero never does, and what if my life is a tragedy. And what if... and what if it isn't?

19.4.2007

2007-04-19T01:39:00.000-07:00

Wow, I knew that it's been a long time since I posted but hadn't realized how long it really was. I came back from Spain. I came back from Israel. Winter changed into spring. I've fallen into depression, climbed back out, fallen again.... I am still struggling in this swamp and there is no way out. The sun outside in shining, I should be at work but I am in P's house typing away.

I guess I should go back and sum up Spain, after all it caused me so much grief and stress at the time. In one word greathard or hardgreat. I did well, I looked well, I interacted, I seemed successful and bonded with people, I couldn't sleep, I vomited.

I guess I can say the same for Israel, although it was longer. And there there was a lot of sadness thrown in. And a loss of control. I didn't manage to supress my dislike for my sister in law, who appeared by surprise with my brother and was all over the place with her eating disorder. Although admittedly the disorder, which got on everyone's nerves, was the excuse. What I disliked is that she is taking my brother away from everyone, she has a kind of possessive spell on him. I came back to NL, fell into P's arms, and wonder if I have the same spell. The spell of dependency, neediness, weakness, and why being with someone I love sometimes makes me weaker not stronger. Not all the time, sometimes. Like, when I heard that I do not have my extension, not yet that is. I have to apply for it a few months before the end of the contract, not the time that I want to be worried about that especially when it is costing me so much in health insurance costs at home (as my residency expires, I asked to extend it until I finish, but if I don't officially finish when I intend to, I can't extend it till then). This also kind of confirmed the fear that no one and nothing is looking out for me, that I can't trust those people who assure me it'll be OK. How many times had my bosses said that the extension was taken care of?

Other things were related with the HIV and the meds. Fear of lipoatrophy. Fear of peripheral neuropathy. Both based on things that I experience, but not strongly, not all the time, and not sure if my mind is playing tricks on me or not. And the week before my period is not a good time to judge either. But I am scared, really scared. And I can't bring it home to P or anyone else because it just makes him worry and he doesn't understand, nor did I fully understand the full package and implications of being with someone with HIV. People I suppose always think of the sexual implications but they are gone sooner or later and you just start to have a great sex life with a condom. No, the worst thing about HIV right now (for me) is the horrible uncertainty and threat that it generates in a world already uncertain, where parents are aging far away, crazy dictators build atomic bombs, economies fail, work is stressful, the body ages, and to top it all of I am a lab rat in the largest scale pharmacological experiment ever performed.

Bug life/niets is zeker

2007-03-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

There is an advertisment on Dutch TV for an insurance company, niets is zeker (nothing is certain/secure). I don't need Delta Lloyd to tell me that niets is zeker, my CD4 is again under the red line, I don't know why. My VL is still undetectable, or was a few weeks ago, but my CD is just not rising. Besides, I doubt they would insure me anyway, or that I could afford their premia if they did.
Insurance, what a strange concept. My health bill for 2006 came through, it was more than 13,000 Euro. Luckily the Dutch health system reformed. I mean, when I was diagnosed I wasn't even insured, but they changed the law as they do every couple of years and during 2006 no health insurance company is allowed to refuse anyone. So, momentarily, I am safe.
B's father died. He went to Bangkok for the funeral, needs money again, but I didn't send him money, I didn't even call or skype. In fact, I was sad briefly and sharply this morning when I read his email, then forgot about it during the whole day. I was busy, kind of. I can't bring myself to write my report, I have become really bad at multitasking, but I rehearsed, again, the presentation for next week, this time in the presence of R, who is also recently orphaned of both parents, and M, to whom I came out last Friday after a dinner. And speaking of dinners, I have been eating so much and put on quite a bit of weight, and summer is just round the corner, especially in the corners of the world I will travel to shortly. But hey, even Tyra Banks is chubby these days, and instead of tormenting emanciated models-in-the-make, she is delivering group hugs and wiping tearing on Dutch TV. I find that insincere, but I know now that we all have all sides to us, and whichever side we wish to express, that is who we are at the moment. I myself am lashing out at a fearful mother on the Ynet HIV forum one day, when she expresses concern that her 3-year-old will get HIV from a kindergarten playmate, and even dares to say that "the suspect" is not an Ethiopian kid, and afterwards I say, "I understand you, you fear for your child, but you have nothing to fear from HIV at least until he becomes interested in sex [or has to undergo medical care I want to add, but I don't, too provocative, even as Israel is reeling from a scandals of multiple deaths in the hospitals from a killer bug, but they are not ready to hear my truth; at least they don't erase me anymore], so in the meantime worry about other things, and if you talk to someone maybe it will help to keep the fears in control. But me, all I do is talk to someone, and does it help? Sometime I think I move from one peak, or valley, of tormention to another. Everything is difficult, nothing obvious, and even P's warm sleeping body does not console, there is just me and my bellyfull of problems, insecurities, unassurences, uninsurances, and niets is zeker and it never was.

An elephant in the fridge

2007-02-28T04:47:00.000-08:00

A guy wakes up thirsty in the middle of the night, walks sleepily to his kitchen and opens the fridge. Incredibly, there is an elephant inside. As the guy stands there blinking in disbelief, the elephant opens its mouth and says: "fact".

This is my life, full of facts that I try to ignore and that I can't believe are happening. I am about to go and present to the head of my institution, I am going to Spain in 10 days or so, and will not only present to 80 people or so, but also meet P's family again, alone this time and bearing some kind of gift, I have a boyfriend who loves me and is a commitment-phobe, I have parents that I see once, maybe twice or thrice a year, and a brother that I talk to about as frequently, I have an ex who is dying, whether from malaria or HIV is unclear, and I myself contracted HIV from an hygenic and unnecessary medical procedure which I shouldn't have even had to undergo because I should have never used the faulty contraceptives that were taken off the shelves while I was having morning sickness and waiting for the procedure that would infect me 9 years ago, and I would not have been infected if I had it at the hospital where I was born, as scheduled, if the assholes from the health authorities hadn't gone on strike again, which wouldn't have happened if the much bigger assholes sitting in government woud have given them enough money to make a reasonable living, and I can never prove this, because so many years have passed since then, and I left and wandered and am now living in a country that I don't identify with , working at a strange job which is all about appearance and nothing about substance, and rain is pouring outside but still I have to get on my small bicycle and cycle through this crazy weather and stand in front of a bunch of people and talk about something that I couldn't give a rat's ass about as though I know what the hell it is I am talking about, but at least they will be friendly, and try not to feel sad that my boyfriend doesn't wish me luck, and all these strange things in my life, they are as inescapable and factual as the elephant in the refridgarator. I can blink as much as I want, but the facts are what they are.

The other day I went to the dental hygenist, who, displaying a typical Dutch mix of thoroughness, systemacity and mindblowing slowness, spent one hour poking around the gums of my upper jaw (the bottom jaw is schedulaed sometime towards the summer), and there was a lot of blood, since I haven't has this done in ages. I came with a reference letter from my very odd dentist saying "Mevrouw XX is HIV positieve" and with a concern about how I would be treated, since doing this job has a higher infection risk than the taking of blood samples. But the Iranian technician was very nice and polite ad respectful, and I was also untra-polite, using u instead of jij, hoping that until my next appointment, the nuclear war will not break out, that it will never break out, because that will be one fact that I for so many reasons will not be able to handle, it freaks me out, and between a tangible elephant and a host of invisible demons, there is no room whatsoever left in my fridge.

Inspired

2007-02-24T10:27:00.000-08:00

I've been neglecting the blog, the gym, my hair, reading, all because of work. But on the bright side, it'll be over and done with somehow (but how?!) less than a month from now, not work itself of course but this immensly stressful period. I know I should go see P's family again when I am there, find the time, bring them something. It will be harder now because of the heat, less hiding possiblities.

I have thrush. That sucks and maybe is too much information but since it impacts my mood I thought I would write it here. Today I have been working on the presentation, not trying it out, just writing the damn thing ('think "I have the opportunity to do this", "I get to do this"; change your terminology and that will change your attitude') jogging and meditating, did a bit of yoga, and all the time on my mind is the performance anxiety from the upcoming weeks. Why the F should I care? Surely I have walked or been pushed through the flames so many times that standing up in front of 3 different audiences (in an ascending size order) shouldn't impact me. But it does. I think if I had to stand in front of even a 1,000 people and talk about having HIV or my life or things that I am passoinate about and wish to convince of, I wouldn't be that nervous, but the way things are I feel as though I am just participating in a phony game, the game of science. It's as though I am a kid again and try to make it look as if I have been doing the work when I know that I have been slacking off. In a sense, my job is robbing me of my adulthood.

I can't write more without exposing what it is that I do completely on the net, and though my profile's had only 131 hits so far, some of which are mine (but who's counting) and I read somewhere that in the US alone there are as many blogs as there are AIDS orphans in Africa, I have to be cautious. I just wish something would come out of all this, this, this... ordeal. I have a lust for life, especially since I don't know how long it'll be (but then again, who does?). I want to do something meaningful. I am bored. But nevertheless, I want to make a good impression... Oh when will I break out of the closet, not the HIV closet exactly, but the day that I will stop thinking about wearing sleeves in public and positioning my arms hairy side up is the day that I will be free... or maybe just the day that I put pen to paper. I know I am happy now... P makes me very, extremely, outrageously happy with his cuddles and criossants and Nutella and sweet love. I don't even mind his snoring much... I just drag myself out of bed and work and sleep during the day instead. I have a nifty new bike and I ride it around like a 10 year old boy (the one P bought me was vandalized). I am going home in April, to Venice in May. I am chubbier that I'd like and tatooed and scarred but making some kind of small reputation at work, I guess, no that is too stressful, don't want to think about that. Being an outsider and a loner is tough, but I am used to it. I sometimes forget that I have HIV, that's the advantage, because I am so used to piling up secrets in layers of discretion, and the most ironic thing is none of them, no amount of pain and bad sex and self destruction led to my infection. There has to be a lesson here somewhere. Just cos someone is paranoid it don't mean they're not being followed; just cos I was a - what exactly?- it doesn't mean that I can't get HIV through medical negligence. And I don't have to pretend to be pure, cos I am not, and I don't need to be a well-rounded, sense-making character, cos God didn't set the scene for me that way. What I do need is to get my head out of my own butt and look at others and their real, or fictional, problems. And that is what makes me happiest. Being on the margins of involvement.

Help

2007-02-22T08:28:00.000-08:00

Swish, squish, thump, thump, drag, bang, whizz, hum, slam, crunch... and so on and on till infinity. I am not talking about the daily grind of my life but about the two (nice, polite, friendly, clean-cut) young women that live above me. Before them there was a guy and I hardly ever heard him, but now, when they are not walking, rearrenging furtiture, sweeping, and incredibly! vaccuming daily, then they simply are not home. What a pair of buttaches, and the thing is, they are nice (I know, I already asked them to stop moving the heavy sliding door that they placed between the dining and living room and feel a need to move 20 times an hour right over my head when I am sitting at the computer. It's amzing how much unnecessary movement and action two young women can generate. Why can't they sit down for fuck's sake, turn on the TV, pick up a book or something. What is it with the daily vaccuming? Sometimes I swear out loud. In this moments, there is nothing and no one I hate more than these girls. I feel like climbing through the window with a knife between my teeth and slaughtering them. So much noise just to keep up some pretext of tidiness and order and borgouise coziness, I am so fed up of it.

Yes, I am stressed, work is stressing me out, so much so that I let P go to (my) bed without as much as a goodnight kiss last night. I sit and do and undo the things that I did before, I have RSI from working on my report and my presentetion, and worse of all, I feel a horrible wave of dread whenever I think of them approaching in giant steps, and how unready I am for all this, and how I mistakenly stumbled on this wierd profession, among these slick professionals, and who the hell am I kidding, I am just an overweight, aging, HIV positive old girl who can't even keep her boyfriend happy and doesn't know what the hell she is talking about, but by next week I will have to be talking in front of many people on two occasions, and by mid-March I will be presenting my shit in another country, and it's all just a load of complete bollocks, and I have no idea how I got mixed up in this.

It's been too long

2007-02-13T01:48:00.000-08:00

Life is rushing past, actually not like whitewater but like a slow deep river, the Mekong maybe, which looks swimable, but once you lower yourself into it it's really hard to get back to shore, and when you do you are way downstream already.

I went through one presentation of my work which went well, although I was nervous and felt unprofessional, but I just talked like a child in front of a class (or a teacher...). Now the big one is coming up, I have to go alone to another country (guess which) and stand in front of who knows how many people, podium, mike and all. At least my bulging thighs and portruding tummy will hopefully be hidden when I am in that setting. I am nervous, and there is still a month to go. I am also working on a report of my work to hand to my bosses. Again, nerves, confusion, procrastination, and unhealthy diversions which involve a lot more food and far too little physical excercise.

But good things are happening too. I hear I love you quite often now.... I cycle to work and the hospital or gym or supermarket in the wind and rain and sometimes snow (though this year has been unreasinably, exceptionally warm winter, and judging by all evidence of science, this is just the beginning).... I am going home in April for two weeks and hopefully on a romantic getaway in Venice in May. We (we!) are talking about moving in together in April too, when I am back. Dunno if it'll really happen and am not really pushing for it, I feel exceptionally, oddly laid back and calm about my relationship. When I am not freaking out that is. But I am not doing that that much anymore. The end of P's contract looms in the horizon, and everything is so uncertain, but so long as we keep moving and loving.....

I am sick with some kind of throat bug which I hope won't migrate towards my lungs.
I met two wonderful, strong, impressive and not so healthy ladies that came up from Amsterdam, and got a bit of an insight into the positive women's world there. Because of the distance, and my laziness/preoccupation, I am not involved yet. And maybe that's just an excuse, maybe I am not strong enough to be involved, to see the effects of the drugs (meeting my doctor again in 2 weeks to discuss switching Stokrin for something lighter on the CNS) and the disease (meeting the gynocologist next week to discuss early menopause and cervical cancer fears). Here and there there are rumours of people dying. Just dying despite HAART and Western medicine. But I remain hopeful and hopefully stronger and tougher, though only bloodworks can reveal that.

Poor B in Thailand is sick. I sent him money with the pretext that he is doing work for me. His writing is really good. I don't know if it's malaria or HIV and the medicine there is not advanced enough to tell them apart, indeed to be certain that he is HIV positive. I tried writing some gay support site over there - no reply - shouldn't have said I was a woman.... a bit of bitterness going on here, or maybe more than a bit, between the "women of the world" and the predominantly gay male crowd. Different agendas. If men are from Mars and women from Venus, positive men and positive women are from entirely different galaxies. One cares about children and stability and love, the other (and yes, I know not the majority of gays or the majority of poz gays, but a very loud minority) about serosorting and the right to bareback without prosceution. The more I see the less I know, the more I know, the more confused I become at this world of ours.

"The girls" told me there are numerous cases of infection through abortion, despite my having googled it to no avail. They themselves know quite a few. Those are illegal abortions in which the suction device went insufficiently sterilized; mine was legal, but performed under illegal conditions. Which makes me hate Israel more. I already have a "full stomach" on it (can one say that in English?). But the Dutch are not angels either. No one is.... There are forces of lightness and darkness at play everywhere, withing countries, systems, and individuals. It is up to each of us to make the daily incessant choice, and when large groups of people make predominantly bad choices, you get countries like Israel, or the Netherlands in WWII, or worse.

Yes, I know, simplistic babble, but this is how I try to explain the world to myself. I am a child playing alone and thinking, thinking (and taking some strong medication too), and in some sense, I never left my grandparents' back yard, where for weeks on end of endless summers, my only companionship in the layered dusty shade of cypress trees were the ants that I would torture: pulling out a limb and then another, drowning them in a plastic cup to rescue them again, until finally a merciful beheading came. So I know all about the dark side.... although these were the only living things I ever hurt intentionally, I did that coldly and thoroughly. The problem is that I grew out of it, but some people continue in that vein. If they cross my path again I hope I can recognize them, but in every torturer there is a torturee waiting to be mistreated, excited at the prospects of sudden inexplicable intoxicating pain. So, in essence, I am no better than any BDSMer or barebacker, except that I made my choices much, much earlier in life. Whereas in their case, as S. put it, the choice is made only when they are dying alone at the hospital with no one to take care of them. But who's to say that with all my choices of love and light, or at least the conscious effort between making these choices and the default darkness, this will not be my ultimate fate?

*****

I recieved a request to post a link to a mega-blog containing links to positive writing, which was the excuse for starting Blogger and getting into my blog again. I doubt I would have unless the request came in. So here it is:
http://ronhudson.blogspot.com/2007/02/8th-edition-of-international-carnival.html

Building up to climax

2007-01-14T00:59:00.000-08:00

I got through this week with what feels like a 1/3 of the normal amount of sleep but was probabaly something like 1/2. I can and do blame Stokrin, but I know that it only interacts with me insofar as I am stressed, mentaly unstable, or whatever term for looney you want to pick. Having said that, Stocrin has been known to drive patients to a psychotic or near-psychotic state, and this is not just an internet anecdote but something every honest professional working with it (like T., my beloved social worker) will be able to tell.
This week, I asked P., who returned into my beckoning arms, to move in with me. There was always the side of me that hoped that a guy might actually pursue me, and some have, but somehow the few that I have ever really been enamoured with had to be coaxed and prodded into a relationship, and P. more than most. I get bitterly disappointed though when he needs to think about it, hesitates, says yes let's do it in March and seconds later looks around his place and sighs that he is already starting to miss it, and backs out. I even cleared a room in my apartment trying to prove to him that most of our belongings can coexist. Now we are here, he is sleeping, I am up already, after a long night of partial insomnia and stomach upset, and the apartment looks great, but I still don't know if he will make the move or not. Which is of course only a fragment of the real issue, will we or will we not make the effort to stay together at the end of the year when his job here is done, and who will carry the brunt of the effort.
It's wierd because I know that he loves me, but I am tired of being the one who says I love you and just sees a smile. Not that I say I love you every day, but when I do, I get a smile and a kiss (except for 2 maybe 3 times). And I think this is symptomatic of the whole relationship. But last night in between sprints to the toilet I figured it out in what is a halfway mature way I think. I figured out the way in which, in conection with our respective families we live and love each other (or others for that matter). I felt like I had another growth sprint, because the last week(s) were characterizes by sulkiness and feelings of rejection on my part, which I am sure he could sense even when I was usually smart enough to try to hide them. But now they are gone. This is P. This is me. I chose to be with him, so I have to accept that he will always be like this. Something like that... he will always hold back and pepper his love with doses of rejection, just like I will always equate it with longing and misunderstanding, based on my own prehistory.
Other things have happened. I have to take another test for cervical cancer, this time really fearing the results with more than just the unease that accompanies any medical test. I didn't even hide it from my parents, because I am so scared that I don't feel like hiding it. I don't want to have any cancer, ever, but especially not there, but I am at high risk for it, as a smoker, as someone who'd had multiple partners, as someone who'd had a lot pf premature sex, and now most of all as a poz. And there is a finding which suggests some abnormality, but I will have to go through the medical heirarchy and beaurocracy to confirm anything.
Workwise, things are spiralling into a buzz of activity, and I have to do something which scares the craout of me, speack in public, and not the way people usually speak in publ;ic to a room full of strangers, which is bad enough, but podium style with a microphone in a strange country, for an incredibely long time, and about things that I am not confident that I know well enough or well at all. But this is a huge opportunity for me, a real breakthrough, and I have to take it, oh and did I forget to mention that it is only in two months but that there are a million things on the way, including another talk, a report, and carrying on working on the usual things that I do. I might as well start working now and stop then. But I desperately need some balance and quiet in my life and more so if I am going to undertake all these things. So I need to make some sort of plan, which is something I am bad at (who wouldn't be with rampant hormones, insomnia, and a head for of acid-like hallucinations every time they manage to fall asleep, as well as very real things to worry about. I might as well be running a country with all the stress I undergo, which if nothing wrecks havoc on the immune system. It's so ironic, that life keeps taking me to the most stressful and unusual place, and that it is so strange, and maybe nothing is special about that, I am just like everyone, but I so want a break from all of this. Just to open a window and breath some freah air and look at a blue skies (as they are, incredibely, today), and not think about hiding any marks or scars or fundamental triths about myself, and not think about impressing anyone or communicating anything, and go back to a white sheet bed with a book and a warm sleepy guy who kisses me on the forehead, and puts me to sleep.

Drowning in mud

2007-01-12T00:31:00.000-08:00

I have been having an awful time of it at nights. All my anxieties, all the white noise of paranoia and fear tunes in at night so that I can choose between several readily available points on the dial, the "how did I get infected" channel; the blind anger station, directed at whoever mis-crossed me that day (admittedly some pretty fucking annoying twats cross my [online] path on Israely web forums), the "oh God I have infected/will infect P, these doctors don't know what they are talking about" channel, the "early menaupause, no children, die alone" channel, the parents' channels (broadcasting mainly dread of Alzheimer's and heart attack, immense guilt and horror, homesickness), the Israel channel (featuring my parents being tormented by the State, me being tormented by the State, with no help from the AIDS Fund since I have fallen out with them due to dominance of said online wanker, the State bombing Iran and getting nuked back, the State fighting with outher neighbouring countries, residents of the State turning unto each other with bared teeth, and me and my old frail parents caught up in all this. There are also some light entertainment channels in the form of work worries, body worries (where i can choose between side effects, lipo, AIDS and premature aging/disfiguring), and a relationship channels (with the all-time multi-episode hit "P will leave me anytime soon whether he wants (work, circumstances) or not (my disease will prove to much to handle, especially the one in my brain, his commitment phobia will intensify)". Everything and anything torment me, but most things can be categorized under any of said channels. Reading helps, until I switch off the light in the advancing AM and try to sleep. Then the TV (although it is more like a surround sound #D cinema) blares up. And when finally I do sleep, I experience Stokrin haze - lifelike, symbolic, vivid dreams that last throughout the entire following day, especially when I don't get to finish them because I have to wake up fo some appointment. For instance, last night, I was with B. in South Africa, and after much wandering and schemeing we managed to borrowed a car from some wayward crazy neighbours to go look at a strange derelict house, where something sinister was being hinted at, and it all made horrible perfect sense. And the night before, there was another such dream, featuring everyone that I know and love basically. In this way sleep becomes more straining than waking life, although being so fatigued from the lack and quality of it, everytime I have to get up before 12 I feel as though I could slip back into its feverish bosom at any minute.

I hate this, I hate what is happening to me, I hate how trapped and fearful I feel. I hate going for dinner with P's collegues and enduring HIV jokes and anecdotes (I had never realized there were so many until I became aware of my positivity). I hate living in the Netherlands, not because there is something specific to complain about except the usual things foreigners complain about, but because as a foriegner my fears are intensified, although Israel is starting to feel like the kind of place one should literally seek asylum from. I have avoided the groups of HIV+ foreigners here because they are mostly from the 3rd world and I figure their problems are much much bigger than mine, but the way I am feeling I am not so sure anymore. No turning back, no going forward, stuck in the abyss with my face to a moldy dark wall, my feet still moving in place. I have again been fluttered on my physical fitness, and told that I should try to run a marathon, which makes me feel like some deranged organism pumped full of testostorone, instead of just bein plainly and simply happy that I am fit, and strong like a small guy, which shows how my mind has been working lately. I don't think, I feel, and feel in my gut, and men stare at me and I don't know if it is my female charms or my wierdness or just my paranoia that makes me imagine that, and I can't enjoy my many many good moments with P because the voices in my head and worse, the feelings in my gut, are so rampant that they tear me in two, one part which is nodding and joking and sweet and communicative, the other which is lying in an alley somewhere, which considers suicide a comforting option at some point in the future, not now but when I have finished letting my parents down and letting myself down and squandering my life and torturing my soul.

Resistence. Resolve. Resolution

2007-01-06T13:51:00.000-08:00

It's been 3 days since I returned from Spain. At first I had a bit of a reverse culture shock (or was it weather shock?), but now I am getting back to myself, whatever that means.

Spain was wonderful, and hard. It exceeded my positive expectations and challenged my negative ones. I mean, I had no social trouble whatsoever, au contraire. I was treated extremely well, and I couldn't have been made to feel more welcome by any of P's family members or friends. P himself was teriffic, and stuck by me through thick and thin. But I did have myself to put up with, and I suffered moods and fears and even nightmares, as well as sleepless nights and constipation. Nothing extreme, but I realized once more that - at least as long as my status remains a secret and stigmatization is not a threat - I am my own worse enemy.

I don't know how to describe the whole thing, since it was amazing, and lasted 9 days, and I have been back for 3 already. I wrote a friend before I left that this blog feels on one hand too isolated and un-recognized, but on the other, too public to write really private things. I have been doing better at communicating with friends, at least via email, at least for now. I have to stifle a sense of panic that rises whenever I think of my job or the next years or the prospects of ever having children, which I badly want. In short, anything out of the here and now causes me extreme uncomfort.

So what can I write about? I smoked like a chimney in Spain and ate like a queen. My weight shifted up nearly 7 kilos since 6 months ago. But I got a compliment today. I was working out pretty seriously after a long time that I have been lazy, and this gym acquaitance told me I am one of the fittest women he has ever met and that I have incredible resistence. Quite a compliment, especially since I was bitching about how bloody boring and time consuming the gym is and about my weight gain. I am amazed to think that I could get such a sincere comment/opinion from a true-to-life bodybuilder, one of the fittest guy I ever met, in fact, and a real gym rat (though not to injury excess), when my body to all opinion has been through hell in the last years, in particular the last one. I have 15% body fat, so not that bad, although I'd like to use some up and get rid of it, but I had gotten so many compliments in Spain that I guess I look just fine and need to only aim to keep it that way. I dunno if I dare be happy about this, since I know of the havoc that my drugs can wreck. In fact, there is a man who works out at my gym that I can't stop glancing at, since I have a strong intuition that he is a poz on meds. Just a hint of lipo that 99.99% of the people would completely overlook, but I see it, and I so much want to give him the thumbs up or the V sign, but he looks so sad and serious and aloof (and gay). And of course, I'd be outing myself if I did, too.

I found the Friendly Bodybuilder's comments really motivating, and he gave me some additional tips on maximazing my workouts. I guess it shows what the power of feedback it. I may think that I have no need to be told this or that, but in fact, my spirit picks up from (genuine) compliments. Ahh the ego, hungrier than the most glutenous stomach, and more fickle. More often than not compliments make me nervous and wary, as I am aware that I have conned my way to recieving them, or that I have to keep up whatever trait generated them.

So what was I on about? My dream, yeah. I had this dream while sleeping in P's childhood bed at his parents' extremely traditional household, alone of course (although we got some serious quality time in the mountains). I also freaked out on several occasions on grounds of how well I was treated by everybody, and what if they knew, and how different I was from their perceived image of me, and on grounds of P not taking our relationship seriously enough, I thought, or just not loving me in the reassuring way that I so desperately need. This dream, I told P I would tell it to him but never quite found the chance. In it I was sharing my current apartment with some young bimbo, presumably Dutch, who was walking around in a G-string and bra, and someone rang the doorbell and I went to open it. I was faced with an old man in a suit, who informed me that the mother of my landlord had passes away, and would I consider attending the funeral? I desperately tried to get out of it, conjuring any excuse since I have for years been avoid family functions of any sort [in real life, that is]. I came up with the pretext that I didn't actually know my landlord in person, since I lease from a real estate agency (which is true, but in real life, there is no landlord, as the apartment is owned by some kind of trust). I told the old man that surely the landlord would be discomforted meeting a tenant she has never previously encountered at her mother's funeral. But he insisted. I consented reluctantly to go if my flatmate would come along. Bear in mind that this dream had the incredibly lifelike quality of Stokrin about it. I saw my flatmate walking towards me down the hall in her skimpy underwear, sexy early 20s chick that she was, and tried to prevent an awkward encounter between her and the old, distinguished gentleman in his tweed suit. I couldn't believe that she would want to go, but after he left, leaving me his card, I told her who that was and she was eager to attend the funeral. Then I woke up, with a very strong impression of the dream (as I mentioned, Stokrin), carried with me the entire day. Since I dreamed it after I had a mini breakdown I had in P's presence, induced by meeting (what seemed like) hoards of family and friends, all overwhelmingly kind and curious and encouraging and oblivious, and since I have for years been avoiding family functions and any relatives but my most immediate, and my friends have dwindled to a minimum, so that I also avoid any of their family functions if there are any, I concluded that this dream was about me reconciling two sides of myself: the slutty, wild, carefree side with the familial, responsibile, conforming side. I was overwhelmed with emotion and yearned to just jump on a plane and hurry home and meet everyone I have been avoiding for so very long, but I know life isn't like that, and no old or young relative is eagerly awaiting my visit, and I can't undo the past and be the obedient, clean, pure, inoccent family member I was years and years ago, long before HIV was even discovered.

And what is my resolution, asides from not having smoked since I came back (easy since P ain't yet here)? I guess it is to try to get back in touch with all the things I let go of, my sensitive side, my artistic tendencies, my pure soul, my essence. I don't know if I can accomplish that, since I get neck cramps just thinking, for instance, about the presentation I have to make at the end of the month and how unsure I am about the whole bloody thing and how it shouldn't matter but it matters to me anyway, I hold on to pride and agression and ego, and really I have the characteristics of an addict even if I never got hooked on any particular drug. But then I think that there was something extremely valuable about the whole trip, not just "for the relationship's sake", not just to ensure that me and P are bonded closer together, and all the little plots and schemes I nurture because I am so afraid of not having the things any woman my age wants, but in a deeper way, something about me and how I grew up, remedying that, taking me back, and for that reason it was also sad, because life is un-undoable. And yeah, even when I write this now I feel deeply saddened, but my resolution is to keep getting in touch with this, and to stop running away, if only for brief moments at a time.

So this is Christmas

2006-12-25T02:55:00.000-08:00

I turn the TV on and watch some Christmas Day mass in a pacific island catherdral, in which a Frech speaking bishop speaks to a white wearning, grass endowed Samoan looking crowd, who break out in beautiful native chanting in response. I have no idea where it is, maybe where Gaugin made his paintings, except that everyone is fat in a healthy round way. I hope it's not somewhere I am banned from entering, because I'd like to see it sometime, if it isn't like Fiji, Malasia (where I have been), Hawaii, who are three of the long list of countries that prohibit HIV+ from entering. Then the program ends and the Pope is on the screen, I assume in a Vatican square, preaching in Latin. It is so quiet outside, and has been increasingly so in the last days, that I spent alone here while everyone I know either joined their families or took off somewhere. They show nativity scenes, nativity scenes from my country, but I know little about that. Or my own religion. I open the presents that I bought for myself for Christmas. I knew I would be alone and I knew it would be wierd, and even though I know what these presents are and my own money paid for them, I feel excited. There is a huge album of photographs called "America", containing near life size portratis of all faces from the businessman to the crack whore, and all states of man from birth through sickness to all kinds of death. There is also a booklet about writing fiction as though you were writing a movie script, by characterizing visually, which I hope will prompt me to do something about this hobbie of mine in the upcoming year. And then I will go jogging, pass through P's and pick up his trolley bag and pack, and try not to be too nervous about flying over to meet his family tomorrow, and not to be something that I am not and can never be because it's so tempting to give others what they want, or what you think they want, so that they will love you, so that you will not be alone on Christmas Day in a strange country whose language you will never fully understand, so that you can go back and start over, and be redeemed.

Ghetto superstar

2006-12-18T10:24:00.000-08:00

My apartment reeks of fries, as though someone was frying in my kitchen. I only have a few minutes between a jog and carpet yoga and a shower and running to P's to make some burritos to write what I want to say. Even though hardly anyone, as far as I know, reads this blog (is it because I don't push it or is it because it's boring, or just due to the huge saliency of blogs and the fact that it doesn't have an attractive interface?), I still have hope that someone somewhere will read it and think it valuable, that I will help someone, or that one day everything that I have been writing here and on various web forums and in emails will converge into a more serious piece of writing.

I have been banned, or banned myself, from the Ynet HIV forum, which is probabaly the most widely seen forum on the Israeli net. The guy who runs it is a complete tightass and I don't know or care to know what the fuck his problem is. I didn't however censure myself on other forums, and I am glad for that. I heard that the Isreali AIDS Task Force will open a forum restricted to HIV+ people, but I don't want to be squeezes into any kind of ghetto. I am glad that I am able to be accepted and understood, to a degree, on other forums, even populist ones, and despite the fact that I write in English. I think this sends a strong message across - I am just like everyone else, or rather, just because I am not like everyone else on the HIV level, it doesn't mean that I have to leave myself at the whims and caprices of a positive drama queen who thinks he can erase me just because he feels like it, whenever he feels like it. I am not angry, I am just pissed, but there will always be a-holes on this planet, and unfortunately, some of them will even have HIV. I mean, just because someone has the bug, as I assume he does, doesn't mean than he is a "good" person, au contraire.

Anyway, who cares? The frying smell is making me hungry...

Retrospective

2006-12-18T01:10:00.000-08:00

The year is coming to a close. The days are colder, but sunny, and global warming is evident. I have been more chaotic that usual, even for me, living always on the verge of what seems like collapse from over-emotion, fatigue, stress and confusion. But somehow I made it through the last weeks without major disasters and with some minor achievements, even if they are not glaringly obvious to anyone but me.

A week from yesterday is the anniversary of my diagnosis, and a week from today I will be on a plane on my way to meet P's family in the South of Europe. I have been dead nervous about both events, building up scenarios, accumulating fears and restlessness. I have heard the voices in my head shierk a million times and in numerous ways how inadequate I am, how fat(er), sick(er), gross(er), stupid(er), chaotic(er), tired(er) and ugly I am. How I will never measure up, not only to others' expectations but to my past selves. How the drugs turn me upside down and inside out, and the binging makes me bloated and wobbly where I used to be firm and toned and together (because society equates a "hardbody" with a balanced mind doesn't it?). And when I wasn't busy being neurotic and obssessive and self-terrorizing, I was paralized with fear about the future of the World, both my own (parents, loved ones, future, lack of pension and stable employment/insurance, P's health) and in general (global warming, Africa, Israel/Palestine, the collapse of the EU economy which I am part of, the general unreliability of the Dutch when it comes to making things work better and their love of bureaucratic reorganizations that end in chaos and confusion which add to my own - whether the insurance system or the train system or anything that requires automated billing). So I fretted and feared, every day more, and it was an iterative process in which each day's panic was a factor of the previous day's plus some.

Then I went to see the psychologist at the hospital that I see every few weeks. i had just discovered that I have a tapeworm living in my intestines, and I was repulsed beyong belief (I still didn't get rid of it, because my doctors will not authorize giving me a one pill prescription until I go through the usual phases of sending a bunch of samples to the lab a week before Christmas, when they will probabaly take weeks to process the thing). I felt so low and lowly that I just sat in his room and cried and rambled on about killing myself. The psyhologist reminded me gently that every time I experience happiness, I have an overwhelming urge to self destruct, to create chaos in my life. Of course, he is 1000% right, and this is, in essence, the story of my life (although, I did not unprovingly infect myself with HIV through a medical procdure, and I did not even "get myself" pregnant, because I was using a contraception that was taken off the shelves while I was actually still pregnant and waiting for the abortion because it was deemed insufficiently effective by the Israeli health authorities, a device that was PRESCRIBED BY A DOCTOR). But to go back to the psychologist, he was completely correct. When things are going well and smooth in my life, I flip out and lose it, because I am used to chaos and havoc, not to peacefulness and serenity and acceptance, because with the first I know that I need to do: hang on for dear life, clench my teeth, and struggle, whereas with the second, I just have a growing sense of impending doom, a shadow creeping behind my back like in a cheap horror movie, where everyone but the heroine knows exactly what is going to happen according to the conventions of the genre. I have never been proved wrong in this hypothesis, but many a time this was not just a self-fulfilling prophecy but a self-destructing malignancy that brought about the expected disaster. Although, again, when I was happy and in love and telling people about it last year - although, evidently, with the wrong guy - I didn't expect to be accidentaly diagnosed with AIDS - but then again this saved my life and brought me to where I am today, and who I am with today, so maybe there is a bigger plan to the scheme of things. But who am I kidding, what role do the millions perishing in Africa and the billions that have perished worldwide over the centuries have in this larger scheme? I cannot afford to have this arrogant, self-absorbed New Age view any longer, even if I never completely held it, but I always thought that if I tried hard enough I would be able to adopt it, and that it would cleanse and purify my life, and rid me of the havoc and fear and senselessness.

The psychologist also mocked my habit of worrying, saying "but what could be a better, and more helpful, way of passing the time than worrying constantly about things that you cannot change, the past and the future, anything but living the present?". And in this he was right too of course. He also said that i was smart and aware and read the power relations at my workplace correctly, when other people might have said that I was over-paranoid or at least oversensitive.

I didn't change after that conversation, although it was a load off. In fact, I continued to spiral downwards, but something did click in the old engine, else I wouldn't be able to write this.

And so this year comes to a close. I am still scared. I didn't yet kill myself, like I planned to do at the end. But hey, last year my world turned upside down 3 days before the end, 3 days before I was supposed to go back to the Netherlands from my homevists and move in with Z. (and what a nightmare that would have been, WHAT WAS I THINKING?). Maybe I will write more in the blog before it ends (like on Christmas, when I will be alone right before my flight). Maybe not. Maybe I will be stuck with my tapeworm into 2007. Maybe not. Maybe I will get my act together workwise. Maybe not. Maybe (I sure hope so) me and P. will grow even stronger and closer. I will be happy if we stay as we are, in this blissful equilibrium which is nothing like I have ever experienced, but I know that life never comes to s standstill like that. I have to be prepared for the possibility that it won't work out, but there is no way that I can prepare for this kind of pain, so I won't even try. I am not even going to write here about things that I am more afraid of like the fate of my parents. I hope in any case to be able to accept that this life is just transitory, a cycle of change or a seesaw of elevation and depression that we all have to go through, regardless of our serostatus. I can try to set acceptance as a goal, but when I set goals in any realm they tend to get further away from me, so I will not attempt to break out of any ruts anymore. After all, any wisdom is retrospective.

Not perfect

2006-12-14T16:58:00.000-08:00

It's almost 2.00 and I can't asleep. I am in my apartment for a change and it seems ages since I have been here. Somehow my life has one again slipped out of my hands and bacame someone else's. My work, my romance, or whatever it is, my body is in the hands of something other than myself. I don't even know what to start with.

In a week or so I will meet P.'s family and I feel so unready for that. I mean, I will not only meet them, but stay with them for 10 whole days. But I don't want to go anywhere. I gave myself one year, and the year is almost up. A lot has happened in this year, more than I can ever imagine, but right now, I feel the way I did in the beginning. It could all end right now. And that would be a relief. I am not saying that I am nowhere near anywhere so awful as I was last year. After all, all I had to hear was "I don't want to live with you". All I had to endure was never hearing I love you, but once. I was not dumped on the curb this time, and he is sleeping in my room peacefully as a mouse.

I felt my boss look at me with pity today, there was a presentation by someone and at first he seemed pleased when I participated but then he looked like I took it too far. Or maybe I imagine, maybe I am hypersensitive. P. says if I could see what other people see I would not worry about them not liking me. But all I feel is the pain in my body and the tears in my throat, and oh, yeah, I have tapeworm. I am so disgusted with myself. But when I told him he laughed. He was not disgusted. But he doesn't love me, not in the way that I need to be loved.

Comment from 18.12: I finally drafted this post and forgot all about it, but now I think I was wrong. I am loved exactly the way I need to be loved, 90% of the time, and it's only fair to mention that, but sometimes there is a burning hell inside me that just isn't satisfied with anything.

Lucky

2006-12-06T00:25:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a while. I just didn't find the time, I didn't find the time to do anything in fact, from excercising to showering to cleaning my place, I am ashamed to say. Everyday tasks seemed to take ages, and I would be running in and out of my apartment, constantly forgetting things. On top of that, my moods were swinging like a pendulum. I felt lost, and moved beween manic anger to tearful contemplation. I would often find myself in lost little dirl mode, walking fast somewhere I was late to with tears streaming uncontrollably down my cheeks. I wasn't crying, but I wasn't allergic either, I don't know what the fuck it was. I reached a point where I couldn't leave the house or get anything done, I would forget my sentenced midway like a chronic stoner, something which P. found cute and annoying at the same time.

But actually I do know. T. the social worker, who saw me last week, commented that she has seen before, and sometimes she would ask the doctors to get some patients off the Stokrin, because she sees us every month or so and knows what's down with us, and they see us every 6 months (3 for the nurse practitioner) and are more interested in communicating their findings and wieghing and measuring than in the kind of discussion that yields this perspective. It got so bad in the beginning of the week that I calle dthe nurse on Monday, and with some difficulty articulating myself (because I could, I am, able to do everything, it's just so bloody taxing) said that I am just too lost lately. He didn't waste words and just said that my Stokrin levels were probabaly too high, because the other nurse had told me to take my meds with food! He said I should stop taking them with food and things will clear up hopefully. I haven't been to work in a couple of days, but worked from home, and it's only been 2 nights since I talked to him, but I do feel an improvement (psychosomatic?). I am not back to being sharp but I am more "together" somehow, just a little bit. And yesterday was Sinterklaas [the warmest ever, crazy, superfast global warming] and there were a bunch of people at my place and it was een heel leuk avond I felt, although I was a bit pissed with myself for calling after them down the stairwell when they left 6 hours later "thank you for coming". But hey, no one's perfect, especially with this amount of chemicals (and wine) running in my blood.

this thing with the Stokrin and how quickly and quietly I was sinking reminded me of how, for a few years before my diagnosis strange little bumps appeared on my skin, especially on my arms and legs. Nothing noticable to the uncritical eye, but I used to jokingly complain about turning slowly into a toad, and I even saw a reknowned skin specialist who tried to burn some of them with peroxide (which made the back of my hand, which he practiced on, look like tiger skin for a while) and commented on my weak immune system, but no one, NO ONE said "do an HIV test", when my counts were dropping bellow the 100, and now that I am on meds, these little bumps are slipping back into my dermis.

And why is this post called "lucky"? Because I fucking am, I am sitting in my beautiful apartment after a great dinner and evening and it's morning now and me and P. were in my bed last night saying loving things to each other, not even having sex (which has been the bomb lately) because we were too tired, and in a couple weeks I am going to meet his family which I am dead nervous of and there will be ups and downs and hills and valleys no doubts. But things are (even in the Stokrin haze and with all the delays) shaping up, also with my work, and I love my family, and I am just so .... happy, but it is fragile this happiness, like a crust covering some dark depths that I am treading on fearfully, taking tiny steps, bended over in fear, and will I dare to straighten my back?

World AIDS day

2006-11-30T23:46:00.000-08:00

So what is my day going to look like? I am meeting S. (running out of letters here), who is going to work for me and I for her instead of my going to Xxxx, because I have decided that as nice as the Xxxxese are, for now, I am not ready to creep into their country on the downlow. More than that, I am never going to enter a country that doesn't allow me entrance as a HIV+, so bye bye USA, Russia and United Arab Emirates (as if I would go there), hello Mexico, Thailand, Japan (again), Morocco, Western Europe, Laos, Australia.... I don't need to spend my money and my time in a place that blacklists me and discriminates against me, and I don't need to palm-sweat my way strategies to sneak in there as though I was smuggling cocaine in my stomach when all I have is a fucking virus (no offence virus). I will have to live with this virus through thick and thin, just like the officials that make the rules and put the prices on drugs and stop sex education and prevent this disease from being treated in most parts of the world will have to live with their conscience. Tough, but I can do it - and they can too I guess, else there wouldn't be 3 millon peoplee dying a year from a managable disease with a real cost of treatment that is just around 50 US$ a month. Funny that, the only country in the West where people are dying for lack of treatment is the USA, the same country where the disease started, where the best drugs and newest treatments are avilable to those who can afford them, and where the stricktest prohibitions on HIV+ entry are applied (I could be arrested, not just deported). But this is not a Fuck the States post, because Africa is not dying just because of the states (although, shutting down funds to prevention programs who don't preach abstinence, in line with the fundementalist Republican Right, is responsible for the escalation of the crisis). It is more my feeling about how evil and heartless people are, and how when the Holocaust happened, the excuse was "we didn't know", but now everyone knows (and AIDS is just one aspect of what we know) and nothing is done. We can sit in our Northern European homes eating popcorn and watching AIDS orphans begging on the streets and selling themselves to AIDS infected truck drivers and miners and sliding towards their imminent doom, as well as a million other unimaginable and indescripable horrors, and the world keeps spinning, and deals are transacted, and hands are shaken on the various lawns, and the money piles up untouched in private bank accounts. My social worker T. told me not to watch TV today, and anyway I won't be home, because I am going to a Korean dinner, but I today is a day that I feel like shouting that I have HIV, and that HIV is not the problem, HIV is a symptom of the problem, and maybe that is why they don't want to touch HIV, because then they would have to stop the arms trade and the flesh trade and the corruption and the gold and diamond mining and all the other things that enable Heaven and Hell to exist at once on this Planet, until sooner and later, the greed and the apathy and the hate and the helplessness will expload in a ball of fire, when the sun will burn us and the empty oceans will burst and cover the corporate skyscrapers and drown the rich and the poor alike.

changing subject

2006-11-27T00:18:00.000-08:00

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.

she's incredible

2006-11-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

I haven't been this excited about a new musician for a long time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD5sahXoj0U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty0v-VVvKsU&mode=related&search=Amy%20Winehouse%20Rehab

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKYTpzrJtX4&search=Amy%20Winehouse%20Rehab

even more awsome live:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dec9pQUnmCc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjHQV-SuqNE&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdILAAWxY_0&mode=related&search=

So...

2006-11-23T10:26:00.000-08:00

I don't write, I heard from a penpal that this blog is depressing, but I don't think so, I mean, it's hard for me to judge it objectively, I only know it helps me survive, when I get into the loop, when I isolate myself like I did today, staying in, confining myself to my apartment and the screen, mostly, trying to reach out but failing, trying to work but not quite managing.

Sometimes I feel so out of touch with home, so far away. My mum called while I was trying to put together some mechanical task that would resemble some pretext of work, and I told her I was busy. I regretted it, but she was not online later. And my phone isn't working anymore, so I can't call her, just skype.

It's cold in this lonely northern corner of the world, and night comes early, and every day I walk the same route, which makes life easier in my condition but also so predictable. I have a chance to take chances, but I don't dare. I know any kind of journey I will have to do should be an inner one, no more pretending for me, faking someone I am not, business clothes and foreign table manners in neon-lit crowded streets, border controls and nights in far off places, stange beds and learning the ropes. I don't want to do that alone. I don't have to shout my disease from the rooftops, but I can no longer afford to be anything but myself. Even though I will be in another country a month from now, meeting P.'s family, ready or not.
Meeting with the psychologist at the hospital again tomorrow.
And maybe all this subdued panic is because, for once, I heard "I love you too"?

There has to be another way

2006-11-21T00:29:00.000-08:00

I am tense, so tense, and I hardly slept. But why is that, and how much of it is caused by me (all maybe?) and preventable?

I met P. last night, it was great, that's not the problem. I somehow don't want to write about that here, too intimate. I will just say it was wonderful, but somehow I closed it off in the "wonderful" compartment, and that does nothing at all to eliminate my fears. If anything, might make them worse. And I latch on to something (in this case, a miscommunication/misunderstanding with R. at work) and amplify them, but in fact, what kept me awake at night asides from P.'s snoring was terrible fears of the future. I didn't smoke. But we ate a lot of pizza. I vowed to change by my eating to more healthy/balanced, and lose weight. I vowed to work at my job. To do more sports, to relax more. But that's an oxymoron, as soon as relaxing becomes a task, it's something I won't do. All I feel like doing today is hiding away at home. Even work is a refuge from the negative emotions that I feel.

I'll try to describe them here: with R. and to a much lesser extent my girlfriend C., life is a series of give-and-take in interactions. I need them in my life, but that demands so much maintenance. It's like neither can accept that I can be self-absorbed. It's not that if they came to me with a problem I would reject them, it's just that I don't have the need, or rather try to avoid, the daily reporting back about tiny things which I guess they need to make life bearable. I guess I sometimes feel the way people do in a romantic relationship, suffocated, like they want more from me than I am able to give. And with R. being in the same workplace, I just find it.... draining. He has recently separated from his GF and though he has a new one to satisfy his sexual/emotional needs, I think that he is not yet certain about their future and he doesn't bring into that relationship his full neurotic self. Which I get a handful of.

Having written this, I feel such a release. I am going to go to work now. I might as well stay home - I work better here anyway. The question is will I have the willpower to work effectively from home and will physically going to work make a difference? I think I will stay here, and call R. to come over for lunch, because all going to work does is cost me money (that I spend on food and the like).

Yep, that's what I'll do.

It's beautiful outside and I wish I could go for a jog but work will happen first. Who knows, maybe I'll cycle with P. later, try out the new bicycle.

He brings so much warmth into my life, I am terrified of losing it. And the best, unimaginably mind blowing ---------------------------------------------------- (self-censorship)

Toughing it out

2006-11-20T00:56:00.000-08:00

It's morning (though all the curtains are drawn and it is back to being damp and dark after a brief burst of spring-like global warming side effect), and though I feel guilty for not being at work/going back to the pile of papers on my desk, I let myself off the hook by acknowledging that I worked for a bit yesterday. P. comes back today. He's only been gone 4 days but it feels like ages. Not because I missed him every single minute (though I did, but in my heart of hearts I am not letting go - explanations below), but because, when I am pushed into spending "quality time" with myself, I go places so far and so lonely and so inexplicable it's very hard to imagine any sort of laidback regularity, which is - externally - the main characteristic of our relation.

What did I do this weekend? mostly a lot of emails. There was a workshop Fri and I got taught things which was an escape from myself and felt good, not having to do everything on my own, keeping tabs and lists of to-do things that need to be checked. Found out I am not elligable for entry to the States either. Caught up (partially) on emails. Lost the cold only to get it back. Made chicken soup (the Jewish penicillin) and ate most of it. Watched a DVD in P.'s place by myself with a strange message. Worked some. Had long conversations with R., who recently broke up with his 7 year girlfriend and moved on to the next, and my parents. Got scared, cleaned the kitchen, dyed my roots. When I look back it seems I did do a thing or two, yet always looks so panicky, so makeshift, so futile. Of course, writing here helps me rid of that anxiety, to a point.

The majaority of the time was spent reading various forums and talkbacks on the internet, passively, being repulsed and scared of the world, of Israel. I had this idea that I could go there instead of Xxxx for my work, and probabaly this is something I could convince my supers of, but I don't know now what scares me more - home or a foriegn communist strange land which denies me admission. The latter I think, because going there involves putting more funds in jeopardy. I wish I could beleive in myself more. I know I can get things done, but when the shit hits the fan I just panic. or rather, I panic while preparing for that, because when it does happen I manage - I'm still here aren't I?

I forgot to mention that P. surprised me by emailing twice and skyping from his trip. I didn't expect more than one short message at best, so I was surprised. He wrote that he misses me, that he missed me from the moment he boarded the plane. I should be overjoyed, but I am too scared to be. I have been down that road so many times. The slippery slope of hope and thinking that my lonely trek through this life is over, and so many times I have crushed like a crush test dummy, that I daren't feel happy. So there is a struggle going on inside me now, and the Dalai lam's Art of Happiness lies on the bed, abandoned, because I am not headed in the positive direction, I am not allowing myself to experience love and happiness and feeling young and joyful, because even when I was young I always burned.

I found this old journal which I brought from home. Sometimes when I wake up or fall asleep I promise myself, along with quitting smoking (which I haven't done since P. left and I binged smoked T. the social worker's brand and then threw them in the rubbish and became ill) an toning down my panic-induced eating that I would seek the place that infected me. That I would put messages out looking for a HIV positive female who'd had an abortion in that place at that time. Since I have the date documented. And since there aren't many of "us" walking around in israel. But I don't. I don't go into vendetta mode. Because I think of the multitudes of HIV+ people in the world who are dying with no treatment, and all the countries putting bans on travel, and all the hardships, and stigma and sicrimination, and men raping babies to gain "immunity" in countries where the government disputes that AIDS results from HIV and offers herbs instead of meds, and I tell myself that I am one of many and it doesn't matter how I got it and it doesn't make me special (after all I did have unsafe sex, who didn't?). I tell myself wake up, live up to this reality. But it's hard for me because this is my reality. I admit that I gave myself freely to way too many men (though to most with protection), but this is also the reality that this is not how I got infected. That I got infected through no fault of my own (though as I said, I have been at fault for having unprotected sex with several people - in smaller number than most of my friends, but it only takes once). Anyway that's why I brought the journal from my last visit, becasue it has all the dates in it. But hang on, I didn't know yet then about the US regulations, and I still thought that the guy who infected me was the same one who got me pregnant, the only one of the people I've had unsafe sex with whose status I didn't know. I guess I brought the journal becasue I have this idea that my life is going around in cycles, and that I need to identify that, and see the processes that I go through. I guess I brought it because sometimes I am amazed to see things I wrote or drew years and years ago and look at them and think damn I was good, I had a talent, and I never did anything with it. I still don't. I guess I wanted to see all the nameless humilations (at the time, you don't think you need to write an name because you won't remeber who it is that hurt you). All the self-hatred.

And now that I finally found "him", we will never lose the condom, we will never have children, and probabaly, we will be seperated by circumstances at the end of this year. No wonder I got ill over a week ago when the psychologist at the hospital - whose name I've forgotten - mentioned that. He was absolutely, overwhelmingly right. I need security. I have always needed it, and now I need it even more.

Does God hate me or what, or does He only help those who help themselves, and since I spent most of my life (or at least a good half) not moving in positive direction, but battling with my demons in the basements of life, I can't really see a sliver of sky through the sunken cobwebbed windows. I have to go upstairs and sit in the garden or at least at the windown, and stop pushing myself into these drak corners, into the earth.

Delirium

2006-11-17T15:17:00.000-08:00

No one reads my blog, I know that for a fact (that is not to say that a few people haven't stumbled across it occasionally, but I have no readership that I am aware of). But today I got an email asking why I don't write anymore. So I said why not, what the hell. What better thing do I have to do past midnight on a Friday (P. is in America), after I have finished consuming all the food that doesn't demand cooking, and surfing the 10 websites that I always do, and jogging tiredly through town, and hearing from my brother that he and his wife are going to try living apart for a while (after a looong time together), and checking my emails compulsively, not finiding anything from P (who left Wed.) but an email from my boss with attachments for me to look at, timelines and the like, that just capture the glam of Friday night.
But mostly, I didn't write because I was first away, no biggie, just a 3 day thing and then back and having to do my shit in front of my collegues (but only those I kinda like and know showed up), and then a weekend with lots of social stuff accompanied by way, way too much food (why is it that people have to busy their mouths nonstop). The trip, I was nervous about because I had to stay alone in a hotel and that was actually my first time travelling (if you can call it that0 alone since diagnosis, which shows that bouncing back is a longer process than I would have liked to beleive. But it worked out fine. P called me daily, although I didn't expect that. I eventually met some really cool people (although, no email exchanges, and kept to myself). And the Dalai Lama's book Art of Happiness kept me company when footsteps reverberated into the small hours through the cheapskate structure of the squat-cum-"youth" hotel. But I didn''t read much. My malaise of not being able to focus, at least not on things that are meaningful, continues, and I am starting to wonder (after reading online, obviously), how much of that is Sustiva-related. Anyhoo, while I was away and came back it got awfully cold, and I caught a bug (joke huh) that stayed with me for an entire week. Actually, I was fine until I went to the hospital last Monday, where I had a meeting with the psycholgist I was finally assigned to. A respectable looking middle aged man who could easily be type cast as a Republican senator, he was not what I expected (I expected someone young), and he didn't say the things I wanted to hear, I guess. Immediately after leaving his office I became ill, and after P left I became increasingly depressed, bullimic, and wierd. At this stage, the Ynet Love & Pain forum helped a lot, and since I wrote in English there about the goings-on on at the psych appointment, I copy paste:
"I was sick for a few days and missed a lot of work, a lot of catching up to do, My boyfriend flew to the US this morning, he will be back next week I am alone in his place with the big TV, watching junk and eating much more junk I had a meeting with a psychologist from my hospital. A middle aged man specializing in chronic diseases. It was the first time I met him. Here is a quote from what he said, after which I became ill: "Your dancing days are over. You are in denial. You pretend that nothing is wrong with you, but you can't convince any country to change its laws for you (reference to many countries that do not give visa or staying permits to HIV+) and you can't convince you nice, happy, boy (reference to my boyfriend) that he needs to make the descision to stay with you. HIV is about reducing risks and all you do is increase the risk and stress in your life by continuing to live as though all your possibilities are open, and you are a teenager, and your time is endless. You need security, and your life has none" I looked at this man and I thought: f*** you, you probabaly have a wife at home that cooks and cleans for you, and you have not been alone since the age of 18 But it didn't help... for the first time in a really long time I feel really, really depressed. I have been thinking how long do I even have to live? Maybe 8, 10, 15 years at most, unless science hits a bigger breakthrough. And how will the quality of my life be? No one can tell me that. So far I have always beat the odds, because I am a very un-typical HIV patient, but who knows when my luck will run out? And who knows when my boyfriend will get tired of me. I feel that I am getting much too dependent on him, which was the reason I wanted to meet a psychologist in the first place, but that doesn't help".

So yeah, I was down, really down. I sort of punished myself (that is often my tendency) for everything in my life that is out of my control, that I don't like. I got amazing responses though. Too bad they're in Hebrew, so I can't put them here. I do feel, incidentaly, that my posting on "regular" forums (whatever that means) is a political statement. But that's not the reason I do it: the real reason is that the HIV forum sucks, and also that there are very few people like me, a handful really. I mean, there is no one just like me, that's obvious, but I am talking about the general characteristics of a certain sex, age, and sexual orientation with HIV in Israel. Very few (though too many, right). I dunno really, I post where I get responses and where I built a community of sorts (the folks at aidsmeds.com are also very welcoming). The HIV forum consists almost exclusively of people asking questions that range from "can I get HIV from a waiter's hand that touched the glass I put to my lips" to "I came in someone's mouth 5 seconds after another guy finished, it was dark and I didn't see well but later I saw that he had very skinny arms and legs and breasts, a sickly site... are those symptomatic of AIDS? can I get HIV this way?". Along this continuum of the idiotic-to-bizarre I don't find myself, it brings me no consolation.

So yeah, I am back at my place now that P. is away, although I have the key to his and he has the big TV, DVD, nice bed, and no horrible things crawling out of the gutter (I still shudder at the memory, pray and hope it was a one-off). My place in contrast, which is potentially much better, is much less clean and tidy nowadays, mostly because I have been using it as a place to quickly shower and change, grab something and run back out. But now I am back at my place, using the square meter in front of my laptop, while the expanse of my apartment lies vacant and strange, waiting to be cleaned, waiting to become a home. I know that this place is a place for two, it is really too big for one. I know that I should do something with it. But I also know it doesn't really matter right now, I have bigger fish to fry, puzzles to solve, monsters to roll around in a deathly combat with.

So, I will try to keep writing, and the few people that do read this, if you like what you read, please push my blog on whatever channel (though not on Israeli ones please). I don't expect a lot of people to read, after all, even my favorite blog, Elocin's wanderlust (http://www.tremblingstar.com/wanderlust/entries/index.cfm) has had only about 2000 profile hits in 5 or so years that it exists. Wish I could post photos like she does too, but that'd be a fat chance. Maybe in another life.

Finally, today I wrote a talkback on the Ynet website, which I hardly ever do. It was on an article about chemotherpay being researched as a potential cure for HIV (count me out of any clinical trials for this one). The very first talkback comment was from some b**** bitching about AIDS being preventable, therefore funds should be given to cancer research. Fuck you. However, I didn't write that, but I wrote:
"Hello. I am HIV+. I had unsafe sex in the past but not many times and a long time ago, so I was very surprised to find out earlier this year that I had AIDS. It took a while but I discovered that the reason I have HIV is a unhygenic medical procedure in Israel 10 years ago at a private hospital. Of course, I will never be able to prove this. And it doesn't matter anyway. It only matters to me. Do not judge anyone until you are in their shoes. AIDS left 18 million orphans in Africa alone, 45 million people in the world live with HIV today. AIDS spreads mostly through sex but also in other ways. You never know what life will bring you, and I hope that you will never be sick with anything, but that if you ever are, no one will blame you for that". I wrote in English, wo who knows if anyone but the moderators will ever bother to read it (there is no virtual keyboard for talkbacks). Oh well, whatever.

You may wonder how I became certain that it was the abortion that infected me (notice the lack of use of that offensive term). Well, after the psychologist stuck that mirror in front of my face and forced me to attend to my situation, I happened to check visa requirements for many countries. The US, to which I thought of accompanying P., actually puts of ban on any type of HIV+ visit, even as a tourist (not unlike China). The only guy whose status I don't know that I slept with without protection is living in the US for years, in fact, he broke my heart, got me pregnant, and moved there. That made it clear for me that in the preceding abortion I was infected. I already wrote here about how unhygenic and quick and crowded it was in that clinic. I don't expect that I will ever be able to do anything with this information.

Forces of Evil

2006-11-06T05:27:00.000-08:00

Abstinence-based against evidence-based

Last night I saw Borat being "redeemed" by crazy Baptists in the American Midwest, the same people that call the shots in the US, Israel, and basically in the rest of the world. Whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, whether religious or secular, even educated or self proclaimed liberal, they have one thing in common - they do not want to acknowledge that people have and enjoy sex, and they think that as long as they shout loud and hard, no one will notice as another prostitute sneaks into their hotel room, as they download another porn, as they fantasize about another fornication they don't dare to reach out for.

In my bedroom, I am hoarding drugs. But how long can I do that for? The drugs have an expiry date.

Self-proclaimed "experts" bring their personal views on sex and what can and cannot be done to internet forums, the TV, the media, while the scientists who discovered what AIDS was are trying to keep up with the virus mutations. The people that work in prevention and treatment and research are busy working, while the amateurs are free to spread the infectious seeds of their ignorance.

Why don't you close all 45 million of us in concentration camps and leave us to die? Castrate us so we don't fuck? Make condoms illegal?

I hate YOU - and if you feel that it is YOU I am talking about, then you are damn right. We are all doomed to die anyway, and when you reach your demise from whatever reason eventually, ask your rightousness and your moralistic preachings for comfort.

Be ashamed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/01/2006_45_mon.shtml

And you have to be perfect, because...?

2006-11-06T02:47:00.000-08:00

Letter:

Hi,

I also cook great food ;0)

I have been bad at updating my blog. there is too much going on in my life to write. This week I will be away most of the week and busy with work. I have to stay in a hotel in a city near Amsterdam, and I consider this a trial run for my trip to Xxxx (almost the same right?). It is not only Xxxx, Xxxx doesn't allow even tourists with HIV to enter but many countries will not give residency or more to HIV+, that means that in about half the world I will not be accepted as a worker, student, or a wife of a local (whether positive or not). This includes Australia, Israel, USA and some EU countries too. Many countries will not accept a HIV test from another country but you have time make a new one from their own doctors. The difference with Xxxx is this includes also a tourist visa.

But if I decide that I want to go I will not let HIV stop me. After all, I have been in these parts of the world including working legally with a work permit in Japan when I was in fact much sicker than now, the only difference was I didn't know it.

In fact, this might be my last job, there are a lot of issues with health insurance and social security. I don't know who would hire me when I am done here, and on the other hand, in 1.5 years my social security in Israel expires (even though I pay it every month like I do here) and I will not be covered for health insurance anymore unless I return and start working there. Catch 22 huh? Israel has these little tricks to prevent people from leaving. For example, if I got settled in another country and wanted to bring my parents to live with me when they are old, all the money they paid to social security during decades of work would go down the drain, b/c an Israeli can't collect that while living abroad even after retirement (unlike a European). Not that Europe is perfect. There are users and abusers everywhere.

When I was very sick (CD<100) I found it helpful to go out in the fresh air (and here it is really cold) and do sports. I ate a lot of kiwis for vitamin C (also cos I was smoking a lot for the stress). Kiwis have more vit C than anything in the world and also vit E. Now my eating is far less healthy, but at least I smoke less (1-4 a day usually at night) and am more relaxed and sleep better, so it balances out I guess. And of course I am much happier than when I was diagnosed, a period during which I fell into a tar pit of emotions so terrible I didn't know I had the capacity to feel them (and now I am discovering emotions so good I had no idea they existed - not all the time right, but once in a while I am suprised with the bliss I can feel - but this is X-rated ;0)).

Yesterday I watched Borat at the cinema, hilarious! One of the guys we were with has a rare lung disease. He is one of a few people in the NL to have this. He told us about it and about having to be extra careful, taking antibiotics etc, and mostly about living with the constant awareness that something could go really wrong. I really felt like sharing and saying I know exactly how you feel, but I couldn't do that around the dinner table.

Yes, life isn't easy. But life is full of perks and bonuses and good things to enjoy, if we just grab them. Not in a greedy way. In a thoughtful way. Enjoy what we have because we have a lot. Life isn't about what "they" tell us it's about, it isn't about being perfect at all.

Be well,
Yours TH

Panic

2006-11-03T04:56:00.000-08:00

I don't even remeber if I used this title once before in this blog or not, but I am absoluetly overwhelmed and brimming with emotion, fear, sadness ... you name it, I'm feeling it, and all at once. And nothing can get me out of it right now, not work or sport or sex or food or a cigarette, nothing. I don't know why this is happening. It's not the hormonal thing cos I am not PMSing, it's something beyond, an accumulation of the past months, years maybe, that is threatening to break through the dam.

I slept OK, I was in this mood last night too after writing here and rushing out to meet E., my former teacher. We had a very hasty dinner, because I was supposed to meet two other people for The Devil Wears Prada. Even the movie, which couldn't have been any lighter and giddier, only reinforced my uncertainties, my fears. The horrors of a workplace, the dependency on the whims of egomanical superiors. But I am not just afraid for myself for a change, but for everything and everyone, the whole world really. E. was prepping for a job interview this morning, she is semi-employed and being hassled by the authorities, who, in a typical way of beaurocrats everywhere, make unreasonable demands in the style of the American Work for Welfare program and the like. At least she is able to get benefits, something I won't be entitled to if I want to stay here and am out of a job, because my job is not "quite" a real job. E. knows that I am sick, since I was forced to miss a few of her classes, but she doesn't know what it is that I have, only that it's serious, and that I'm worried, and that I am here partially for the healthcare, and that my social security/NHS back home won't last as long as my contract here. I mean, this was not the reason I came to the NL, it was just a stop en route for me, but I happened to be diagnosed while staying here and I thank my lucky stars for that sometimes. Anyhoo, we had this whole depressing discussion while I dug into a steaming bowl of Japanese noodles, and then I rushed to the cinema. The two girls that I met there, L., one of them works at my hospital, in the Health Psych Dept., which my doctors and also T. the social worker have contacted ages ago on my behalf, but which I haven't heard from yet. Since L. is xxxese, I got into this whole paranoia that she would come across my name on file and know what exactly it is that I have, and with her being raised where and how she was raised would flip out completely, and maybe even spread the word. Now, I know this is paranoia, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. How she would react when she realizes that a poz has been kissing her cheeks and digging into her popcorn. At the same time I was thinking about my response on the Ynet HIV forum to some poor girl who "wants her beauty back" because AZT has taken it away, and all the horror of that, especially for a woman (but also for a man, it's just that this hits closer to home). Then gossipy (but nice) R., the other girl who was with us, started questioning me about a collegue, which I happen to deeply dislike but that is completely besides the point, who has been recently hospitalized , asking me what exactly it is that she's got. It just seemed so nosy and insensitive, and I couldn't determine whether she didn't believe that this person's affliction was real, or whether she was just curious to see what it was, but in the same awful way that we look at car crushes, without enough compassion, just with that "phew" feeling, as though the fact that some poor sod has crushed exempts us (while we ourselves are in a car as we look!). Later, at P.'s place, I already knew I should discuss my going-or-not to Asia* with him, but I didn't think around midnight on a workday was a good time, so I booked him for the weekend, but I was still so flustered. He knew something was going on with me obviously, I have the kind of face that just doesn't hide emotion, but we let it go and went to bed (we have been sleeping together the whole week, which is atypical, since usually we do that only on weekends. The main reason is that I found some indescripebly horrid worm/centipede thing that must've crawled out of the drain on the edge of my sink, among my facecreams and toothbrush, and even though I washed it into the drain and then through some fueming hissing anti-blockage acid granules after it, I am mortified that something similar would reappear; I am not a phobic, I mean, I don't like cockroaches but I can handle them, but this was something I have never come across, and there it was in my bathroom sink!!!!). This morning we woke up after a relatively quiet night for both of us (we are getting better at sleeping together as we become more acclimatized to sharing a bed), although, like every night this week, it was suffused with strange lifelike and symbolic nightmares/dreams. P. always watches CNN while he has breakfast, and usually I don't join him, but today I did, and in the course of 10 minutes or so, saw how by 2050 there won't be anymore fish in the oceans, refugees in Sudan, the usual images of Israel and the Gaza strip, some area in Iraq that looked like a bit of Mars controlled by black uniformed militias and some other things I may be fogetting. I was stunned (by this time P. had already left and I was alone). I was like someone who came off a desret island, or some peaceful serene place, to find out how complicated and vicious and dangerous and hopeless the world is, and me, a tiny particle in it, awash on the waves made by decision makers that influence my life, my health, my happiness, my future, my loved ones, just as these poor souls in Sudan huddle under makeshift shelters in the dust storm, only of course a billion times better off and luckier, but still completely, utterly left to the whims of the universe and mankind. Especially mankind... but also the universe, which has allowed this virus to mutate, I don't particularly trust and the moment.

And all this blabber to write what I could have in a line: I am shit scared, from and for everything.

5 minutes

2006-11-02T10:58:00.000-08:00

I have 5 minutes, 5 min b4 I leave the bldg and hop out into the cold Nov night, to meet friends. What a hectic day, life, I am exauhsted, breathlessly jumping for one thing to another, unable to complete even 5 min of concentration, random, erratic.
I know I should be taking better care but I fell off the wagon somehow, kind of like an addict, yeah, like Kiedis' whose bio I am about to finish on the stepper, gone are the days when I would be reading a book a week or much much more.

Where am I? I am lost, apparently alone in the workplace, even though it's only 20.00, everyone is long gone, and if I didn't have an appointment downtown I'd be gone too.

I am going crazy. Echt waar. I don't mean that I will need to be hospitalized or that I am becoming psycho, nope, but I am going nuts. Too many things, issues, descisions, love, contacts, dreams, hopes, fears, horrors... it's just too much. And so little time. I can't handle it.

I would appreciate a comment from anyone who knows what that feels like, because it is so hard to get a grip sometimes.

I will either break, or falter, or do the things that mean the most to me, like this thing I am doing now. This is the essence, the rest is just ego and fear. Well sod it; it's not like I have a pension or anything waiting, and everything that I have is all good and well, but is this it? I am showing others how smart I am hopefully, and building pyramids of stress and fear of disappointing on my shoulders, but what about me, what about what it means to be sick and alone and single in another country without a place to really call home and a great fear of the future and all this lust for life and writing that wants to erupt? How long will I cave in?

I have to run. With all due respect, I am not Keidis or any other junkie, I am just normative obedient collaborative me, and mustn't be late.

Hurdles

2006-10-31T00:55:00.000-08:00

Recently I didn't have time/energy/will to blog, because I was consumed by other events. It is so easy for me to become distracted, and I really haven't found yet the way to focus and narrow down and breathe, but I am trying.

First, work has been a flurry of issues, with too many things happening (or not) at once, to the point that my head felt inflated, my breathing shallow, and I don't know what to do first and how and what to let go. I was also really disheartened by issues surrounding ownership of my work, but these have hopefully been resolves, since I had a talk with my super yesterday. Before that, I was bottling it all in, but now I hope that nothing involving my own stuff will be done without permission, at least not by him.

A long time ago the hospital said they'd give me a psychologist, but I never got one, and seem to be lost in the beaurocratic maze. That's OK I guess, because I don't always beleive that shrinks are helpful. Especially not when you don't meet often. I always have the feeling that simply because they expect me to open up and dig in my past, I clam up and become completely unserious. I also kind of despise the psyhcological jargon. But I have been reading a lot of psych self help books which sustained me, and I have been talking to T. the social worker for about 1/2 hour every months or 6 weeks, which is really helpful. On the macro level. In the micro, it is still a lot of ups and downs and turbulence, and I wonder if it will always be like that.

I decided to leave off the decision regarding Asia until it can be decided by itself. The reason I gave was my health, which is true, I mean, I would like to know my most recent counts (taken without any special problems a week after the bloodtaking fiasco I described under "ouch"). But my doctors don't object, they even gave me a letter for XXXXese customs. It's just that going to a country where HIV is illegal freaks me out. Going somewhere were I will be alone too. Leaving P. for several weeks doesn't seem lucrative. Hell, leaving the bed in the morning is getting harder as the days are colder, wetter and grayer. But mostly, if I try to think what I am afraid of exactly, but also what I crave, paradoxically, it's that feeling of being "out there", alone, doing my thing, meeting strangers, getting things going, being polite, dressing in a businesslike fashion and appearing as though I know what the fuck it is I am talking about, fighting fatigue, increasing the enormous learning curve I have been on for the last years by an unknown but huge factor... some days it's attractive, some days downright terrifying, and I think what the hell do I need this for when I have this disease, and I better accept my limitations. It's not even that I am ambitious when it comes to the job, or to anything in fact.

Haven't slept in my house for a few days, but at P.'s. My bedroom is dark (a hallogen bulb burned out and I can't find one to replace it) and freezing. And it's not even properly cold yet!

I don't seem to be able to express myself properly, at least not in writing, in the last days. I have been thinking of course, but not writing. I watched for 2 consecutive days two movies that made me think. One was Secretary, the other Memoirs of a Geisha. Of course, the first one is cutting edge and acclaimed and the second is mushy kitsch (but oh, Kyoto!), but the stories are so similar - a hurting young woman doing anything to be with an aloof, distant, even dangerous father-figure of a man, and succeeding. Happy end. And in both cases, you wonder: why him? And the answer is never in the man but always in the girl and her condition, which is helpless, whether that is self-inflicted or not. I guess I feel that if I will go to Asia again I will slip out of that role. Sure P. wants to see me strong and independent, but then would I need him? It's all about the balance. But where does that lie? Nowhere towards the end of this post I guess, and now I have to decide whether to go to work (to which I am late already) or work from here and hit the gym and then go to work, which will make me feel less guilty. Guess I'll stick with the latter.

Emergence

2006-10-28T01:13:00.000-07:00

I rush to my apartment through the gray chilly air, my hair an uncombed bird’s nest and crumbs of sleep sticking to the corners of my eyes. I leave P. in his warm bed, emerging from his own web of dreams. I need to write, I need the outlet. I wake up the snoozing computer from energy saving mode, and click on my name to re-enter windows. I click on the Word icon in the Start menu. It takes several long seconds to respond. I can’t get there fast enough.

In the last days I have not been writing in this blog, because I needed the interaction and response of others. I posted a question, a query, a plea on my blog and in the web forum I frequent, “Love and Hurt”. I got no responses on my blog, mainly because very few people read it. I got some responses on the forum. One of the disadvantages of the forum is that most of the time I am forced to use English there, which is not the language of the portal or the people that use it. As a result I sometimes get flamed and bashed. But most of the time I am amazed by the reactions I get and the discussions I generate, despite the use of a foreign language. So I cried. I cried with the relief of letting it all out, I cried with the release of having strangers see my inside. I will copy and paste some of the interactions later.

There are quite a few people that write me privately. These can be friends, but also people I never met and even people whose first names I don’t know and they don’t know my own. There is the Old Toad who writes every day, and I always take the time to answer, knowing how poor and desolate he is, and now also knowing that I probably infected him to top it off… but many times he has helped me too, in his broken English and offbeat outdated quote-book collocations. There were many a time that his Buddhist take on life, his inner peace and accepted have shown me the way when it was too dark or, adversely, when too many distracting lights were blinking and flashing, blinding me into erratic shallow breath.

I am a Wailing Wall and a sounding board to some people, and they are for me. It is not always HIV-related, or it starts off as a HIV topic and transcends elsewhere into the realms of pain and experience, hope, want, fear. Into the fibers of our existence. And as I write and they write, our neurons fire, our brain parts are activated as we scan through endless networks of lexical items to express that pressing emotion that fills our bodies, raises our blood pressure, cramps the backs of our necks. And when the right words are found – which is of course completely objective – we feel a release not unlike the release of orgasm which is just the letting go of an accumulation of tension, or the momentous euphoria that comes after a long jog or bicycle ride. For a moment, we are set free. But unlike sex of sport (or binging or drug addiction), there is something else that this writing generates, there is a process of change set in motion which alters us, so that the next time we are slightly different when we encounter the same situation, whether inner or external.

As I write here I find that it is increasingly difficult to limit myself to things that won't reveal my identity. Already if someone I know stumbled across this page and read it carefully they would know who I am. At some point I will have to stop. Maintain my privacy. But not yet. It's a compulsion. It's keeping me afloat. I have taken to writing in Word first and then extracting what I am comfortable with to this webpage, which is not the purpose of this blog for me at all, I mean, to be blunt, it was supposed to be the plastic tub next to the bed I would heave into once in a while. But I can't be too risque (risque! ha ha... I always wanted to use that word, it is a sexy cheesy Danielle Steele/Jackie Collins type of word, like allure, and evokes assosiations of daytime encounters in hotels, sunglasses crossing through the lobby and skincolored stockings and beige raincoats).

Advice needed

2006-10-25T00:51:00.000-07:00

I woke up today in a strange mood (yes it's that time of the month). I sometimes feel that I spend too much time/energy on the interet, yet it helped me and kept me alive, literally (not to mention got me a career.
Last night I was as usual with my boyfriend, he made great dinner, then he was ironing, and he called himself a house husband. I dared to tell him that I would like to live with him. We are now 5 months together, and we know each other for about 8 .
He didn't react to this, both of us got new apartmentsabout 6 months ago, and we live on the same street, so there is no reason to live togetherHe only said that if we didn't live so close he would not walk me home every night. I asked what he would do and he said he would come to my place more. It's like I am always trying to catch him with a nasty comment, to test him, but it doesn't come
He didn't say anything about the living together, he never says anything but hugs and kisses me all the time. I am going to spend 10 days with his family, he told his parents that I am coming. I am so nervous, because they are so conservative that i will have to sleep in his room and he will have to sleep with his sister (not in the same bed haha). Plus, they don't speak any English, nada. He told me that his dad told him after his first girlfriend (when he was 15-20) that the next girl that he brings to their house must be the girl he will marry... well, he had other girlfriends but he didn't bring them and now he brings me and he is a few years older than me, so yeah, of course I think about it
We even talked about children, on our trip, because there were a lot of kids around and I shed a tear and said I don't know if I will ever have any - between my job, treatment, and disease I don't know if it is possible, although HIV+ women in general can have healthy kids. And he said that he doesn't mind adopting a kid at all, even an older kid, even a black or Asian kid (you see a lot of that here). But it was all very theoretical...
yesterday he asked me if there is anything I miss/need, and I said that I am happy, which is true. I am very happy. This has been the best year of my life - ironic huh? The year that I find out that I have HIV (actually have AIDS, on paper), is the best year of my life, and the most fulfilling love affair. But everything is so uncertain. I will prbabaly go to Asia around March for a while from work, he will probabaly have to leave this country around August. Now that I have him, I will just die if I have to stay here alone without him, but of course I couldn't say that. I only said in reply to his question that I used to need to hear I love you but I don't anymore, and he didn't say anything. He never told me he loves me. But everyone says he does. My social worker says he does. She says he will never say it, and he will never make descisions, because he lives his life - also his professional life - in a very relaxed way without making descisions, without worrying about the future or regretting the past. I guess this is what enables him to have a relationship and also sex - safe, but still - with me. Not that i ever think I would infect him, because we talked to professionals about this, but still, I know the amount of paranoia when it comes to HIV, and I don't expect myself to be a hit on the singles market, especially not in Israel
Yet it would be nice to hear I love you from him. As I wrote here, on Sunday he said that he is very tempted to say I love you, and asked me what would happen if he did. I said "I just might believe you" - should have said I don't know, but somehow I always play along to his tune, without thinking
Why am I writing all this? I guess I am nervous. I feel vulnerable. I don't want to manipulate him into staying here, even though he loves it here. It's not even sure that if he wants he can stay once his job is done. There is high unemployment here even for locals, and I know many many couples of foreigners who had to live in different countries and/or seperate under our circumstances. But he seems to want to leave everything to chance, "que sera sera", and my fear is that if we leave it to chance I will lose everything, but I am afraid to push because I don't want to lose everything anyway because of my stress
Advice anyone?

nervous

2006-10-24T00:44:00.000-07:00

I am jolted away from a strange dream/nightmare in which a brother(?) of mine is entering a closed apartment that I have boarded up, he is big and abusive, a potential molester, nothing like my real brother at all, who is also in the dream. I have to pretend and be nice although I am shit scared of him. Then there is an angry violent mustachioed Mexican man, almost comic because he is so short, but nevertheless dangerous. I hate waking up with an alarm clock, because then I can't finish or remember or understand my dreams, and they follow me around the whole day. The first thing I do while having breakfast is "vomit" on one of the participants in a web forum I use, who is a prick. He was just boasting last night about how he gets down and dirty with the Eastern European sex slaves in Pattaya, Thailand. Another guy wrote that he goes to prostitutes too. Actually someone I sympathize with although he is a wierdo (can I say that?). Both of these guys are like the blind leading the blind, writing advice about love and hurt when they know F-all about F-all. So yeah, I guess the little Mexican gangster is my anger, because I spent last night bitching to P. about the girlfriend of my boss together with my other boss "sampling"some chunks of my work. And there is nothing I can do about it because it is done in a very clever way, but also, even if it wasn't walking the thin line, I am dependent on these people and I might be even more so in the future. So what's a little ego when there is a chance for freedom, for understanding of my special needs, for special consideration. Then we watched Anchorman, which I have already seen so wasn't that funny this time, except Ben Stiller in a tiny role as a violent Spanish language newscaster in a TV channel B-movie type "gang war". Tiny and furious, almost foaming at the mouth... no wonder I had a small Mexican in my dream...

I have to get to work, but I am stalling by writing here. I all of a sudden, while complaining to P. about those acts of dishonesty, got really nervous about things I have to do later this year. Standing up in front of people, presenting my work. I hate that. But then again, this comes with the job, and 99% of the problems and fears are in my mind, and come from a place where I feel judged and ridiculed. And also the trip to Asia looms in the distance, but I am still stalling while saying to myself I will wait for my counts (which I have to get tested for this week again due to the blood taking fiasco, so I will have the results only in about 2 weeks), even though the doctors do not object to my going, and have even sent me a letter that I can show if I am stopped by customs or need to see a physician. But the health thing, that's just the excuse. Really I am scared of the trip and comfortable in my life here, and I crave stability and warmth, and P. is a constant presence in my life, at the expence of other things like other friends and the gym and reading and writing, but a stablizing force I am fast becoming dependent on, which is also scary. knowing I would see him any given evening. Although we usually don't spend week nights together. This is something I have come to rely on. It is 5 months since we became a couple, and about 8 since we met.

I'm listening to Lucinda Williams. We're going to see her next week. Not your typical born-for-the-stage moaning and grinding Britney/Shakira/Beyonce/Christina type star, that's for sure, yet she goes out there and does it, and has been doing it for many years. Just singing, writing, making music. On and on. That's inspiring. I need that long haul motivation, because I am feeling lost.

Weekend Warrior

2006-10-23T00:07:00.000-07:00

Well I am back from the national park/freeway motel, which were both wonderful. We didn't do anything we planned to do.. almost, missing out on some improtant sites, but we cycled for miles and miles and miles in the automn colors, and we ate in a great posh restaurant, and we got even closer. And it couldn't have been better.

I had planned to write in my blog this morning because it's already late and I want to squeeze in a jog before coming (late) to work, but I ended up writing a long reply to a girl I know from an internet forum (I could spend my whole life replying emails) and then drafting it because it was too personal. I don't trust my judgement sometimes, and prefer to wait.

I did not have the computer at the tiny getaway, so I ended up scribbling on the hotel reciept while sitting on the toilet. I made a list of some of the crazy "musts" and beliefs that opress and depress me in my head. Here they are, in a random order, and probabaly incomplete:

- I must always look my best
- I must remain young(er) looking
- If there is someone younger, prettier andf thinner around (or in a magazine ad, TV screen), I must compare myself and become jealous of her
- Ditto for someone more successful, with family, etc
- Wasting time is sinful
- Time is money
- An unattached woman is lonely & pathetic
- Sex should always result in orgasm
- A smile on a face means the owner of that face is happy
- Saddness is a sin and an embarassment
- Visible saddness more so
- I must produce something, all the time, every day
- I must look my best but no one should be aware of the effort/time/money I spend on it
- A woman without a man is desolate, lonely, and pitiful; a man without a woman is free, intersting and strong
- If a partner ever heard me fart, saw a booger in my nose, looked at various asymetric details of my body, or saw an untweezed hair on my upper lip/chin, he would becomes so disgusted that he would have to leave me
- I must excel in everything I do
- I mustn't falter, experiment or hesitate
- Men can't stand emotion; women can't stand lack of emotion
- I must supply everyone with what they need, when they need it, reading and responding to their needs as they appear
- If I am unattractive, life is not worth living
- I must grab every chance - for food, sex, affaction, friendship, love, travle, success, respect (professional and personal) when it appears because if I don't it will be gone forever
- If I lose touch with friends, they will be permanently gone from my life; If I don't talk to my parents for a while they will die, and everything that we had before would be meaningless
- If I don't sleep enough, I don't look fresh, and when I don't look fresh/young people will know something is wrong with me and keep away
- When I leave people, they die; when I don't maintain contact, they will not be there when I do
- No one any nothing ever waits
- If I stop to acknowledge that I am happy and satisfied at a present moment, something will immediately ruin that
- People inevitably let you down; it's in their nature
- Women are used and abused; except some, but I don't know how they operate
- Love equals possession and love without the possession to show for it equals nothing
- I must always have what I want, when I want it. Therefore, I a) must know what I want and b) suffer when I don't have it
- Pain is an illusion and a disturbance to be fought and erased
- Everyone is responsible for their destiny
- Life should be fair and unfairness should be balanced out
- Suffering brings reward
- Gluttony is a sin, but waste is too
- To be proud is shamful; modesty is a virtue
- Hoping for the best inevitably results in the worst
- If I make a plan I must always stick to it
- There are people dependent on me
- A job 1/2 done is a job not done
- Ugliness is shameful
- Beauty and ugliness, good and evil, laziness and production, etc, can't live side by side
- Happiness results in inevitable comedown

Having written this down I emerged from the toilet (where I was perhaps symbolically taking a dump at the same time), and proceeded to my most excellent day with P. yet. we ddn't follow any plan through, missed the museum, the Medieval city, etc, but instead where surrounded by kiddies (it is half term vacation), and I even shed a tear saying I don't know if I will ever have kids (at the same time I said I don't like 'em, which is true to a point), because it's difficult with my state of health, and P. said he wouldn't mind adoption, even of an older kid. What a sweetheart... we were at the cash machine at home and he said I have to argue, because we never do (except about Communism vs. Capitalism and obscure stuff like that), and I said I love you, which is the most controversial thing I could have said. And he said, it's so tempting to say, after a weekend like this, I love you too (he has never said it). And then he said, what'll happen if I say it. And I said, I just might believe you. I should have said I dunno, try it... so I didn't hear the actual words, but I didn't care, we were happy as two pigs in shit the whole weekend, and my list kind of redeemed me from obssessive possessive mode, for now.

Out

2006-10-20T23:47:00.000-07:00

I wake up excited like a kid, as though we are flying to India or Mexico, or at least to Paris, and not to a national park nearby. I can't help it, I love travel. I love seeing, doing, eating, thinking new things, getting out of the rut. Even my apartment smells different this morning, as though all my perceptions have been altered, and I feel myself being abroad, something which in everyday life I forget, unless I have someone visiting me.

It's strange how that makes everything special, gets me out of myself. Of course, this is just a small weekend getaway, and I am still nervous, mostly about not being good enough, smart enough, strong enough, sexy enough, getting my period mid-way... wearing clothes that stand out (how silly is that, we are staying in the Netherlands, how much could I possibily stand out?).

Going to rush to the supermarket now for some supplies, or is that too much? Are we being too organized? I never like to take food with me, even though it saves a lot of money, because I like the unpredictability of finding food on the road, although, this is still the Netherlands, and whatever food we may find will be probabaly as drab as it usually (but not always!) is. Drab is good too, sometimes I like staff lying around in refridgerators, full of conservatives, packed and processed, wht I don't know. Not because of the taste but because of how it makes me feel, the impersonality of it, like 24-hour convinience store food (Asia is full of those), neon lights, apathetic clerks, lives and auras rushing in and out, like ghosts in the night getting their supplies.
It's exciting, not knowing how the next 48 will look like, taking the plunge. I wish it was further, then again this is just a tryout, poking our toe in the water. And we're staying in one of these impersonal chain hotels on the highway. I used to clean one like that and I know how filthy they really are, did 4 rooms an hour, wiping the bathroom with the used towels, dropping pubes on the entrance carpet where they won't be seen (techniques taught by experienced chambermaides). Yet I don't care. Of course I prefer a genuinely clean cosy welcoming haven, but I would sleep in a capsule (at least until fatigue became an issue). Anywhere where there's movement, motion, fusion.

We even slept apart last night so we'd be fresh today... I wonder how many couples would do that, if you're crazy in love (but we're not) and it's a Friday night and you have a trip planned for the next day. In my previous relationships, I would be spinning into a loop, lovemaking and getting up early, a mad scramble to the car rental agency. Not this one, this one is on the slow cooker. I like that. Sometimes it makes me feel lonely and insecure. But I like that. No more emotional rollercoasters, at least to a degree that they can be prevented. Although... the last days... but I shan't (I always wanted to use that British sounding abbreviation) get neurotic about it, at least no more than usual. I wish we could just keep going. Hijack the rental car (would would they do? probabaly just fine us), make calls to work, cross borders, reach Morocco or Russia or Albania (I would run out of drugs though... but I did take a couple days' more just in case).

One of my dreams is taking a trip around the world, visiting HIV+ people wherever I find them, and writing a book with their stories, like a map or a puzzle. But will I ever dare to be that selfish? I think it is important though, and I don't think a similar project has ever be done, of course, it will help me get more miles under my belt. But that's not the only reason. Nope, not at all. Such a journey could be risky though. And cost heaps. Maybe when I am done here.

Wake up!

2006-10-18T23:31:00.000-07:00

As I expected, I woke up today with an acute feeling of embarassment over my crusade of self pity yesterday, as well as with a cough... I understand why it happened (lots to think about while my veins were beng poked and prodded, loneliness/homesickness, PMS), but, c'mon... talk about a whining, whinging... In any case, I feel ashamed. But when I started this blog, I didn't want it to be "reperesentative", showing only one side of me, the cool, mature, respectable side as though I was writing one of those "taken from life" boring-ass magazine columns. I am not cool, and I do get upset, and I am childish sometimes, as in a few times a day, and a drama queen, and I self destruct (to a point) and revel in misery. And the only way to change it is see it, so I see it now. I don't have time to write about everything that contradicts what I wrote/how I felt, but just say that if I cornered myself into the misunderstood/lonely/isolated niche I have only myself to blame. Well, lots of people get depressed on their birthdays. I guess there is the child, or spoilt princess in all of us, though looking back I can't recall a single birthday that was the epitome of that for me, or my ever being treated as a princess, but that isn't the point... "we" feel that birthdays "should" be special, that everyone should drop what they are doing and congratulate you (and I am in my 30s not teens....), that breakfasts should be served in bed (too many romantic movies), perhaps with a ring inside a bun (ha!!!). In short, ridiculous, kitschy crap. And now I am off for a jog in the grayness. Happy Birthday to You (me), now bugger off!

As good as it gets

2006-10-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

They say that whatever you do on your birthday is a preview of the whole year. I remeber my 30th b-day, which I was terrified of. I had just landed my first legal job in Japan a week or so earlier, and I was traveling to the small town where I was supposed to live, via Sapporo, Kyoto and Tokyo. On my 30th, I was on the road with S., and I spent my first night in a love hotel, which was nice and clean and cozy despite having no windows, a completely sterile environment designed for discretion and automation. So when my birthday rolled in, I was making love, but I was not in love; I was headed to a new destination, he was headed back, and though we had feelings for each other, it was clear that we were not destined to be together, and we were just there for mutual support.
My 31st... dinner in the Netherlands prepared by a few friends, people I am unfortunately no longer in touch with. They moved on, our lives parted ways. My 32nd, I had dinner at an Indian restaurant with C. We are still friends, but we don't see each other as often as we used to. She is the only one who called and texted to congratulate me on this birthday. Everyone else knew, but forgot. There were no emails, not even from my parents or brother, and although I spent the evening with P. as usual, and although when the day rolled in I was probabaly somewhere before ot after orgasm, in the end he left without any wishes, just a reminder not to stay up by the computer for too long. We did make plans to travel this weekend, and he even surprised me by saying he'll take Monday off. But when the clock turned into the new day, after we were finished and dressed and before he departed, he just said that if I have time tomorrow I should look online for a B&B etc. My mum wrote me about a B&B I enquired about, but (like on my 31st), she too forgot to mention my birthday. Nothing from B., or R., or my friends in Israel, or the hundreds of people I associated with over the last 10 or so years either.
P. booked the ticket for me to fly to join him for new year's. I will be missing Christmas, since I don't want to stay that long where I can't speak the language. Silly really, this need for control, but I thought 2 full weeks will be too much. I will have to see what I do for Christmas, since everyone I know will be gone. Not that I celebrate Christmas, but it is such a family oriented time, and the entire city empties out. I guess I will do pretty much what I do now, type something out on the computer, smoke.

The only mention of my birthday that I got was an ecard from a complete stranger, which made me cry. I know that something fundamental in my life needs to be changed, but I don't know how to change it. I know that if I go to work tomorrow, J. will remember my birthday, but I asked her not to mention it to anybody. I don't want to bring cakes and sweets as is the custom here, to all those people who will soon, somehow, be gone too. I know that I am a HIV+ with a boyfriend that cares about me, and I definately know that my parents love me to death, and my brother too. I know I touched people's lives in my life, but at this particular point in time, I can't help feeling defeated. I can't help wondering if this is as good as it will ever get. I am sure that I will be embarassed reading this tomorrow, but whatever.

Ouch

2006-10-18T07:24:00.000-07:00

I don't feel well, I was at the hosital for hours this morning, and 1 hour was spent on taking my blood, and they still didn't finish. Have to return next week to continue. I have just one vein that protrudes enough to take blood, but they were poking me everywhere, even though I showed them the right place initially, but after the blood stopped flowing from there, they had to try other points on that vein and other veins, to no avail. The blood just wouldn't leave my body and enter the pile of test tubes that was waiting for it. I got to a point where I was suggesting the veins on my feet, just like a hardcore junkie. I tried to relax and embrace the moment and not escape from the pricking sensations in my arms, that were amplified by the nurses jiggling the needle trying to encourage the blood to flow, didn't help either. In total they had to fill 14 test tubes, but they couldn't finish. It was the most awful feeling, even though the nurses were very nice, but they couldn't stop hurting me, and too many staff members were hovering around. I went to work afterwards, but felt too crap to stay there, had a binge containing the calories of 2 days' calorie intake at least, which didn't help, and went home.

In addition, I was disappointed with my CD4 count. In the last 3 months it has only gone up 10 points, which is basically nothing, doesn't mean anything (from 200 to 230 and then to 240, in 6 months).

I also found out that I was supposed to take Viread with fatty food. No one told me that. Maybe that's why my counts are still low. Who knows.

Crappity crap.

Consequences

2006-10-17T19:29:00.000-07:00

One of the side effects of maturing into an adult is realizing, perhaps sadly, that everything in life happens for a reason. The fact that I am awake now at almost 04.00 when I have to be up in 4 hours has a reason. The fact that I have HIV has a reason.
I watched Short Cuts with P. It is not my favorite movie but is becoming the best movie I have ever seen with the more times I view it. Like the Bible it is an intricate web of stories, all somehow connected, all happening for a reason. The aging waitress who ignoring her daughter’s story of childhood abuse and choosing to remain with an alcoholic partner kills a boy with her car, but reamins unaware of it because he picks himself up and says he is alright and walks home, only to die from brain damage later. The daughter, who is involved with an irresponsible cheating dodgy makeup artist, portrayed by Robert Downy Jr., just drags by on the verge of tears, always turning to people who can't or won't listen, or who want to know for the wrong reasons, repeating the pattern. The singer who is so engrossed in past fame, singing “they know me in Paris, they know me in Rome” and living the past of her lover’s demise from an OD in Amsterdam "where they appreciate jazz musicians" loses her daughter when again and again she ignores the warning signs of an upcoming suicide as well as the beauty and talent of her daughter as a classical string musician. The guy who bottles up all the anger inside at damaged (I don't know another way of putting it, one of those vacant women you sometimes meat who is so hard and opaque from such a young age it seems to be unpenetrable and irreversible) wife who is makes hardcore sex calls from home while obviously disturbed children are present (“it goes into one ear and comes out of another”) bottles it all up ends up randomly murdering a young woman. Otherwise, all the characters are bottling things up and, ironically, or fittingly, reaching for a bottle or a cigarette, taking it in deeper and deeper, suffocating and drowning their own truths. The only persons redeemed when the movie comes to a close are the ones who are able to cry, shout, confess, hear the truth, and to a certain degree laugh, and only the truth redeems. The movie shows how even random, apparently inexplicable acts of violence have deep rooted reasons both in people’s behaviors and decisions and in events that trigger them.

I have been corresponding with someone who contacted me through a HIV (or HIV anxiety/phobia?) forum and is waiting to see if he is positive or not, although he has been tested negative. I don’t believe that he will turn out to be HIV+, but I find his inner logic and way of dealing with things to be similar to mine. I appreciate the way he is handling his fate, which is, like mine, mighty odd. I want to ask my doctors about him tomorrow, if we have time – after all I will need my own results explained, prescriptions filled, queries answered – he was told by doctors in Israel that because he was sprayed with a tiny amount of blood from an unknown source on his clothes during his work at a hospital he was somehow infected through layers of cloth and healthy skin. I don’t believe he has HIV, I think these doctors are full of crap and prejudice, and my first reaction was anger oat the blatant lack of professionalism and knowldge on their part and on the other hand the abundance of smug, insensitive confidence that allows them to put him through this mental hell, but regardless of my anger, I believe that there is a reason why his doctors are fucking with his head like this. Nevertheless, at his current condition he will not be able to see it, perhaps sometime in the future, and that is a dark alley that I am not sure I will have the mental resources to spare going into either. That is his journey, sadly because he has to go through it alone, since he hasn’t told anyone but me and those jackass doctors. I think he is dealing well with his difficult situation, since it is obvious that he does have some sort of serious health issue going on. But neither he nor I have reached that point yet where things converge and where we are able to face reality. Reality is being revealed one small section at a time, when we are ready for it, when it wants to be revealed, and the only thing we can do is not stand in its way.
My guilt over having told my mum about my way of infection dissipates, even though I know I caused her grief. But I am still teriffied I may have triggered a chain event of chaos and inflicted the big C on her or something, with the grief I habitually caused her through life. It was not my fault, since I didn't have it easy myself in any way, shape or form, but there are reprecussions.
I only regret having once again asking her to shelter my dad. I ask to shelter my dad because I have always felt he is more vulnerable and somehow more innocent, and that if he knew the truth he would be so disappointed with his profession, with his calling, that the break will be too huge. But somehow I fear that with all the protection of my dad it is my mum that will go first, because strength is ultimately a weakness.
I need to talk to my doctors first about my abortion hypothesis, because so far I have only talked to T. my social worker, though I know she has as much experience in the field as any of them and if she says that it is likely, and under my own personal circumstances highly likely, that I was infected through this dirty abortion, then they won’t say anything different.

I spent this evening worried that P. had forgotten to buy me a plane ticket. He hadn’t. And that he had forgotten about my birthday this week. He hadn’t either. I smoked and ate tons of junk tonight, blaming it on PMS, and as a result couldn’t fall asleep when I got into bed at one. Everything happens for a reason, and if I die of respiratory disease, or my skin ages, or I gain even more weight than I did lately (admittedly while doing shitloads of sport) I will know what to blame. Yes, everything happens for a reason, but not everything is controllable, and to err is human. Not fixing the mistakes though, repetition, addiction, these are the worst enemies, but sometimes (and my own life is a good example, especially the first half), we can only counterbalance the pain with poison.
Since my 1-2-3 cigarettes a night are a habit, I have to substitute them with another one if I want to quit. Something like doing a yoga routine for 5 minutes instead, jumping up and down for 5 minutes, whatever. As ridiculous as that might be, it is the only way to kick a habit, an addiction – to replace it with another, not just to be left with the aching gaping need.

weekend summary

2006-10-16T01:04:00.000-07:00

It is a glorious day, but cold. I am wearing my coat while I type this in my living room, late for work, having tea, not sure how the week'll turn out, having overslept, or rather laid around at P.'s house last night. He woke me up at 03.00 or so saying my name in his sleep, and since then I have not been able to fall back asleep. Considering that we went to be too late anyway because of making love, I am so tired. I know there is nothing more boring than repeating how tired one is, but really, every fiber in my body is screaming for rest.

I ended up rollerblading alone and together with K. yesterday, we got all over the city (though I was not very dignified on my feet). K. commented on how insecure I am, according to him, I can actually blade pretty well, and it's all in my head.

Then we got back, had a smoke & coffee at P.'s place, since I had no milk, went to my place where I cooked lunch, and decided to go cycling. We cycled out of town and then P. got back and joined us, and we ended up cycling something like 25 km to some nearby lakes. Halfway through we discovered that the brake on my back wheel was down, no wonder I had been struggling and sweating as though I was in a spinning class! We got home, had dinner, I did the dishes, K. departed, and me and P. fell asleep after much, much lovemaking. So yeah, it was an awsome Sunday, once again proving right the cliche that there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

Between the cycling, rollerblading, and sex, though, not too mention quite a few cigarettes (having smoked one of T.'s in our last meeting I bought her brand and have momentarily ceased bumming off of P.), no wonder I feel like I have been put through a juicer. Not having slept enough (I passed out as soon as sex was over, but who wouldn't wake up abruptly to the sound of their name being murmured?), I feel as though my body is infused with toxins. I fear that this situation will continue until I get my period, soon, I hope.

And I told my mum about my suspicions re. the abortion that I had nine years ago. I had avoided talking to my parents for 2 weeks, until it sunk in. She was very sad, as I anticipated, and now I feel angry with myself for having saddened her.

Better haul my tired cramped ass off to work.
And yes, although I feel all this and more, it was a great weekend, well worth it.

The Fear Factor

2006-10-15T00:27:00.000-07:00

I realized what HIV is for me, it's the sounding board that intensifies all my fears. Yesterday I went to P.'s house while he's away to watch a DVD, but ended up watching a documentary on people with OCD and anxiety. I never gave much thought to OCD, and while I acknowledged that I suffer from anxiety many times, I never have the patience for, say, people with AIDS anxiety who compulsively ask questions on the web forums, questions which I feel stigmatize me, by reinforcing unlikely ways of transmition. I always want to tell these people, "shut the hell up and go find yourself a shrink!". There are people who take numerous tests after minimal or zero risk and are still not satisfied they are negative; there are people who come up with all sorts of bizzare imaginary scenarios that seem to be taken from a cheap 90s "ebola" horror movie. All sorts of wierdos crop up... and on the other hand, people, mostly gay men, with very real risks through downright dodgy sexual practices. NOT that I think HIV is a gay disease or punishment for any kind of sex, and NOT that I think that it wouldn't spread otherwise (just look at me). I wrote about it in the aidsmeds forum, actually, I should find that post and copy it here.
My own way of dealing with anxiety has always been to go headfirst into the thing that scares me, which is of course something that leads both to precrastination and to a worsening of the anxiety. Watching these people on TV last night with their endless cleansing and disinfection rituals, their terror of bacteria, their disintegrating relationships (they were all married, oddly enough), I realized how much of that there is in me, actually. There was a woman who hasn't touched her husband or child in 3 years, and was walking around the house in rubber gloves while picking things via a piece of kitchen roll. There was the guy who chained his foot to the bed so that he will be certain that he hasn't sleptwalked and committed a crime. Of course I have never done anything of the sort, but how much irrational thought, how rampant my imagination runs sometimes (sometimes...? all the time!) with scenarios of doom and gloom. What a powerful enemy-from-within the human mind is...
As I type this I am wearing my blading gear. I have been so afraid of rollerblading again. I have always been afraid of it, that's why I was doing it in the first place. I am going to go for just a short spin in the area near my place. The last time I tried it, my brother was here. I put the blades on, wobbled unsteadily as though I've never done this in my life, and felt such distress that I removed them saying I can't do this. But today I made a blading appointment with K., who is really experienced, so I need to get the feel of the road before I meet him. And that's also a way of controlling anxiety. I know that when I have to speak in public later this year, it will be a challenge (I was going to write "I'd be nervous as hell", but I'm trying out a different viewpoint). That's why I'm already preparing, whereas P. when he has to do something like that, goes the other extreme and does everything in the very last minute. I mean, when I had to go to Venice, I took a whole day off (admittedly I just got my period, but still) just to pack. Isn't that compulsive? And what about my eating, which was fairly pronounced this weekend, isn't that a way of soothing the anxiety, a devious way like addiction, which turns into a monster that constantly needs to be nurtured, on top of the existing anxiety?

I will be off now then...

Moody

2006-10-13T23:15:00.000-07:00

I have been builiding up so much tension in the last days. P. is away from work and I have 3 days alone... alone but not lonely, at least not yet. I did feel strange last night, all sorts of thoughts were popping up as I made my way home from the gym. I saw this town as I saw it when I first moved here. And especially as I saw it during those horrible months immediately following my disgnosis: the warm inviting interiors, so cosy and gezellig, that I could never be part of. Well, slowly slowly, inch by inch, the elphant f****ed the ant. I don't feel like that anymore, I do feel a hundredfold more at home and belonging, but nevertheless, I feel dependent. I think all my panic from the last days, and even from last night when i was downright bullimic while sitting in front of my laptop watching Anchorman, comes down to that. I'm scared. I'm scared and quite probabaly I project this fear unto P., even though our communication has resumed it's lighthearted, jokey vibe.

There was a dinner with collegues, where I felt comfortable and right at home, although I ate way too much (I didn't drink, and maybe that was an outlet instead). We were having this work-related discussion, and I realized all of us were partnered, even the gay ones. I realized we are adults, set in our ways. I know people here who have relocated with a partner, indefinately or for a fixed amount of time like my own contract, and the partner hasn't got much to do here, since it is extremely hard for a non-Dutch to get employment. I know of an awful lot of long-distance relationship. And I know that I don't want to have one. Complicated. I had a meeting with my social worker T. If I need to "call on someone" to support me in hard moments, I always call on her in my head. She is mid-50s, and doesn't have children, and I think he partner is dead. She is a tough woman, and when I look at her, I don't feel sorry for her at all, but I don't want this. I want to hang on to my dream of having a family. Next week is my birthday. And so much is unclear. In many ways, nearing my mid-30s I am as helpless and as insecure as I was in my 20s or even teens, a tad bit less self-destructive (a thought that was crossing my mind as I gave in to binge eating last night after P. called and we had a lighthearted if slightly forced jokey exchange). I am still reading Keidis' bio and it's mindblowing the amount of pure poison the man put into his body, which I must say doesn't look worse for wear. And the amount of unprotected, no-holds-barred sex... which brings me to my second topic ---

T. said, that my suspicions are most likely right, and that there is a good chance that I was infected with HIV by the medical "professionals" in that clinic. And since then I have been walking around with very mixed feelings. Part of me is releived, I have always thought it odd that out of the 20 or so HIV+ non-heroin addict heterosexuals in a country of 7 million, a large part of are Africans, I would bump, so to speak, into the one who would infect me. Especially that back in the day the number was even smaller. What are the odds? I said this to P., and he agreed. Given that, it is highly likely that I was infected through this unhygenic procedure. T. said, from her experience working in hospitals, there is no way that they could have "done" that many women in such a short time while sticking to rulebook sterilization protocols. And that blows my mind. They just didn't give a shit (which would have been obvious to anyone there seeing the tiny locker room packed with dazed, vomiting women right after - the discharged us all at once). The thing is, I would have never ended up in that place, nor would it have been so crowded, if the public system didn't go on sudden strike the day that the abortion was scheduled.

I trust T. and I know she is a dedicated professional working with HIV from day 1, and she wouldn't say something like this lightly. Even when I told her about B. being infected, she left pretty large margins of doubt as to whether or not it was by me. But here she was much more decisive.

Of course, I would never be able to prove anything, especially since 9 years have passed. If it was a recent event, I would sue their ass. But I can only imagine what it would be like now, with me living overseas for so many years, and only me knowing who I had sex with, and only my word about having used a condom. And with my having a tattoo made that year, and traveling in third world countries. But I know the needles for the tattoo were clean, I saw it with my own eyes, and I know that I had unprotected sex with very few partners, and I know most of them are negative, and the only one that I don't know, that bastard living in the States, I know he has a girlfriend. Not that it means anything, I have a boyfriend, but again, what are the odds, given the statistics... And even with him, we had only had unprotected sex a few times (actually, it was protected against pregnanacy, but I got pregnant anyway, which is a story that should be told some other time... I was using a contraceptive called the sponge, which was prescribed by a gynocologist and was a kind of unrecyclable diaphragm. And while I was pregnant and waiting for the abortion I read that it had been taken off the shelves, so to speak, by the Health Authorities who found out that in the heat conditions of the Middle East it had a too high failure rate. Talk about irony... talk about a theme in my fucking life. And talk about finding safety... it was the first time I had sex after 2 years, and it was the first time I felt semi-normal, in my new job, attending university, surrounded by friends... I was such a good girl then. I was so hopeful, and I thought this was my one and only last chance to be normal, I wasn't even drinking or smoking cigarettes then, I was just hopeful, I started studying psychology, I thought I could fix my life, and others', and [and this really makes me sound like a burned out old woman] I was pretty as hell and had less than zero confidence. Which was a lethal combination. I have never been in love like that before or since. I gave everything I had to this guy. I was his forever, and he s**t on me. But that is history... and here I am now, wounded, scarred, still moving in the same circles literally and symbolically. Still afraid of getting hurt. Still giving men what I think they want and not putting myself in the focus. Still hoping, still hating myself for hoping. Still so bloody afraid, except older, much older, at the age when I definately should have a family of my own, playing games cut out for much younger and healthier people. In love and having to hide it from someone who can't take it, who can only be with me "accidentaly", on his own terms. And of course, with HIV. No wonder I want to kill myself sometimes. No wonder I get filled with dread from the approaching winter. Even if on the surface everything is cool, and I am doing my job and getting into it, and I have friends who are like me, well, as like me as anybody could be which is quite off the mark. When I write this, I realize that the point isn't how I was infected with HIV at all, although they are complete bastards in that clinic and should go to hell, but all the decisions I have (not been) taking in my life, and the way I lived it, so afraid of everything and so helpless I ended up hurting myself over and over and over, and letting others do it for me. I need to stop that. I can't carry on like this. But I don't know how.

tips for a good relationship & blogging/living

2006-10-12T00:10:00.000-07:00

These tips I copied last night out of the BBC website:
Tips
"Talk about your resentment at the situation rather than at each other and look forward to the time when you're next together.

When dreams change
Your partner always insisted they hated travel, but has now announced a desire to emigrate to Peru. How can that happen?
As we get older, most of us become wiser and more self-confident. Our tastes change and so do our priorities. It's this capacity to change that makes it possible to be happy with the same person for 70 years. And when both partners change and grow together, it can be a life-enriching experience.
But change can also a little scary. We may fear that our partner is growing away from us. For a time it may seem we have less in common, that we don't know them as well as we thought. But even if your dreams are off course for a while, it doesn't mean they won't come together again in the future.
Talking together
The most important thing is to share the same personal values and priorities in life with your partner. And when couples talk about their underlying motivations and needs, they often discover that they do.
For example: If you want to abseil down Mount Kilimanjaro and your partner wants to write science fiction, you both want to satisfy a personal need to accomplish something that takes stamina, perseverance and skill.
Or if your partner wants to work as much overtime as possible while you want to have more time at home, underneath you may both believe that the children come first and want to do what you can to provide for them.
Practical exercise
If your goals in life seem to be worlds apart, don't give up yet. Sit down together and identify what need within you that goal is going to satisfy. You may well find that your goals are the same as your partner's - it's just the paths that are different. Have a look at your hopes and dreams to find out more".

After doing this little research and before setting of to bed I realised suddenly that ... we want the same things!

But then this morning, it all got scrambled again... and I wrote this:
Here is the thing, I started this blog as a survival tool for HIV. And I still have HIV. But this blog could have been under so many other titles, I could have let random events or characters traits or situations define me, but I didn’t. this could have been a blog about singledom, relationships, immigration, homesickness, disillusionment, my job, about music, films, books… travel lust, breaking away from your past, abuse, addiction, well being, physical exercise, mental exercise, writing, the Netherlands, family, the past, all these things and more could have become the focus of my life, but didn’t. I could define myself as well as and through a broken heart, disappointment. But I choose not to. The only reason I tagged this blog under HIV was that HIV was the mother of all crisis that forced me to write, or else…

How can I reconcile all these parts and how can I prioritize? Life just whizzes past – I wrote this before but it’s still so true, without me having time, without me taking the time to do the things that are in my heart. And other things take precedence, and I need to focus, but I can’t. there is just nothing stable to hold on to, it seems, nothing but the fleeting moment. And there is nothing in this world I’d like than a place of my own, with my loved ones there, somewhere to call home and start off from there, head out and come back wiser and windswept and knowing that it is waiting… and right now I feel so far from that, even the smallest decisions and commitments like what am I going to do with tonight or what/how to eat or whether to shower this morning or not and what to wear when I leave the house and should I after the appointment with social worker T. and before the one with my boss and the meeting with my colleagues head back home for a jog and a shower, and should I spend more time at and on work, look into funding, push myself further, and should I stay away from the computer and especially from anything involving a mouse like web forums because I fear the beginning of RSI, all these things hum and buzz around me (I forgot to mention the big one: should I go to the hairdresser and blow cash on my hair being blowdried straight just because I feel like it, just on a whim like a teenager). And what is important and what is not and what the fuck am I and why do I have the feeling that I am missing out on all the important things in life as I am writing this, like my parents, who unfortunately live in a place I don’t want to call home anymore, even though I miss it, but I miss the idea of it or the way it made me feel when I was younger and times past, although many of these were awful but also wonderful, and not what it really is. And how can I avoid being consumed by this mind-masturbation if I let myself get increasingly involved in it, and to what extent is it helping me if at all? And what part of it is ambition and wanting to set a foot out there and make my dent, and what part is my own essence. I have to answer all these questions, and I am still in my robe having my breakfast tea for fuck’s sake ;0)

Blowing it

2006-10-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

I didn't write for a while, I effed up with P. I mean, I ended up bottling it all in, not just the stuff with the medical experiemntation and all my suspicions. Also my qualms about going or not to Asia, the uncertainty of remainig in the Netherlands, my temporary defeat in the battle to live in the present, the stupid questions on the Ynet HIV forum ("my kid has been eating from the same bowl as other kids, can he get HIV?"). It all piled up, and then P. was at my place last night and I cooked dinner for a while and was so sad during it, he kept asking me what was wrong, I had to leave the table as soon as I was done and go to the window to smoke. All the songs I had randomly picked on my computer seemed so relevant, so sad. beck's Lost Cause, stuff like that. Him and I, we were on a totally different wavelength. he managed to make me laugh a few times and he tried to get me to tell him why I was sad but I didn't want to sound crazy. We went to bed and made love which was amazing, but I couldn't climax no matter what, and afterwards he pressed me to tell him again, and I had just opened my mouth to say it when he backed out and said "never mind, keep it for tomorrow. If it's still on your mind then it means that it's important". But it this stage, there was no backing up for me, and I ended up saying first that I want to live with him, something which I promised myself I'd never do. And he was kind of stunned and then he said well what do you think that I should do, and I said, I think you love me, but you are chicken to say so, which is what everybody says. But then he was like, no, I don't love you that way, and I am not ready, it's too early. And even his invitation to spend Christmas with his family, he turned around and made it not serious at all. And at that stage he had kind of pushed me to the edge, so I started blabbering about the whole drugs experimentation thing and my fear of the future and my priority of being with him and writing over my career, which is all true, in a way, but it should have never come out like that. And he was stunned and put off with all the responsibility. And then we went to smoke a cigarette, it was very late. He told me to finish it, he said "kill it", and I put it out and said "I killed it", meaning our relationship. But he didn't break up with me after all. He said that he wants to keep trying, even though he's afraid of "someone" getting hurt, but, he said, in life, people get hurt. He went home even though he didn't plan to spend the night at my place to pick up sour apples we were craving, and then we went to bed. He was tossing and turning and I was beating myself up over my entire conduct that evening, and I was sure that he was unable to sleep, until at some point I heard him snore and realized he was sleeping, and I only dozed off around 4.00, and woke up with a sickening, regret-filled, hangover feeling. I hated myself for having lost control like this. He had said when we were discusssing that it's good that I had let things out in the open and it's not good when one side pretends, but the only thing that came out of it is me scaring him and him seeing how desperate and vulnerable and scared and dependent I am, all the things that are such a turnoff for him, for any guy really but especially for him. I mean, I cried a lot, to top it off. I looked like crap. I didn't care anymore. I let myself lose control. I lost my cool.

I got through the day with the help of an email from B., who, having gotten over his malaria, is resuming his life, and wrote me (without knowing anything that had happened to me the previous night, since I hardly mention P. to him) that the only people worth crying over are those who'd never make you cry, and with support from R. via skype and then in person, when we played hookie and went on a long bike ride in the middle of the day, and a decent Dutch class, in which I felt myself gaining fluency. I got through the day, and even got a nice email from P. because I emailed him a song he was searching online, and he wrote that I am "crazy, sweet and sexy". But I do not like the crazy bit. No not at all. And I do not like him pretending that my coming over to spend more than a week with his family and friends, none of whom I will be able to converse with, without any of my usual outlets of gym, internet, friends, or even just plain taking a walk or going to the supermarket is no biggie, just a casual thing in a casual (if committed) relationship, and doesn't mean anything. Especially when I will be staying away from my own family. But if I choose to cancel my trip, I know it will be a blow to any chance I have with P. Yet he acts like he doesn't care at all about the future. I was at his place now, he had actually called me to see whether I am coming for dinner or not, and I did, and we were both tired, kissing and eating pizzas and watching TV and "scheduling" sex for tomorrow, after which he'll be leaving for 3 days to go to some work-related thing. There were no bad vibes between us at all, and I left even before he went to bed, and he insisted on walking me home, but then a few minutes later I called him, because he has lent me a computer program that belongs to his work and I wanted to ask if he needs it before the weekend, and I heard how wary his voice was, or maybe (probabaly!!!) I am ultra-sensitive, and scared, and him and I are both tired, and me I am premenstrual again, and he is a commitmentphobe so what did I expect when out of the blue I said I want to live with you without even meaning it, meaning instead take me into account, don't leave me behind (and how pressing is that, him and I have about a year together still), because I am getting used to you, and I am loving you more all the time even if you don't love me.

A dream/sickened

2006-10-09T23:28:00.000-07:00

Here is the dream: my mum has this childhood friend, let's call her Y, and out of all “the adults” I know, including the extended family, Y is the only one who knows I am positive. Y is a social worker, but not the emphatic type. At least, not in the way I have perceived her my entire life. Rather, I always perceived her as a snob, bragging about her kids, her new granddaughter. Anyway, in the dream, Y had a daughter, which she does in real life (incidentally, she also has a brother who is positive and has been for many years, living in the States, which is the reason my mum told her), but that was not the daughter I have met a couple of times at all. My mum kind of dragged me, badgered me to come for a visit at Y’s house, because I got into one of these sulky depressing that grabs me as soon as the euphoria of coming for a homevisit dissipates. That daughter, she was doing a PhD in a prestigious American university, and Y was mighty proud of that, in a way that she always is: confident, boasting. The daughter was also married, and her and her husband were also on a homevisit at Y’s beautiful house in one of the upmarket suburbs North of Tel Aviv. I didn’t want to meet the kids, but as I said, my mum pestered me to go, and because I was so down, I was kind of lacking the will to resist, or the security or whatever. We got to Y’s place, and she was beaming with pride as usual, and I was so embarrassed, because I left my parents’ home wearing the ugliest cloths possible, the uniform of the clinically depressed, I was dressed like an old unemployed immigrant in a dark blue polyester trackpants and an itchy, ugly “grandpa” sweater in tints of brown, and my head was the bird’s nest it becomes when I don’t comb it for a few days and emerge out of bed. Then the daughter was there. I had imagined this glamorous, ambitious and suave young woman, but she looked scruffy, and fat, she looked worse than me. Her husband was there, and he was hot, I mean totally yummy, he looked like an Israeli actor I had seen in a film shortly before I left with my friend M (whom incidentally I must call): scruffy too, but I love that on an (especially young) guy, soft brown skin, huge brown eyes, kind of like a strung-out, mixed race, grungy Johnny Depp. The kind of guy who is not for me for many, many years, but that I can’t take my eyes off (it is embarrassing sometimes how I just stare at attractive people, whether at the gym or my Dutch class, some of them female, not because I have the hots for them or anything, just because certain kind of beauty are magnetizing). At first, I was grumpy and embarrassed and reluctant to speak. I put on my usual rebel act to hide my pain, but then I started talking to the girl somehow, and she revealed that wasn’t happy at all in her position – it was lonely, there were only three of them in a whole building, which stood way off on the campus, so that she had to walk alone in the dark and cold during winter, and, she said, she had gained all this weight just recently, she even told me how much, from the stress (I had assumed she was so happy in her life, and the weight was a pregnancy). The husband, he was kissing her while giving me “the look” (as men sometimes do), but I had no delusions about their attachment, and anyway, once I know someone is partnered, even if I don’t know who with, I would never ever try to get in the middle, I am just not cut out for that, and I think I never was (I have a whole theory about that, and it has to do with the parents, with some girls successfully getting daddy’s attention over mummy, and other like me being pushed away or whisked somewhere totally different so mum & dad’s relationship can make it through the hardships, and therefore always perceiving couples – no matter what the statistics and experience says – as this impenetrable unit to bounce off of; it is not morals I am talking about here, although they exist as well, but something deeper). Anyway, I was slowly warming to these people, realizing they had their problems, realizing actually I was better off at my non-prestigious job than that girl in hers, because it allows me a lot of freedom, is not that demanding, and enables me, literally, to travel the world. That was the dream, and I woke up with a feeling of completeness, but also of loss. I woke up more energized and enthused for my own life, which recently (workwise) gets more and more exciting, although that doesn’t necessarily affect the time I spend working per se, but also kind of grieving the loss of the illusion of perfection, the loss of envy at the price of gaining a perspective on people’s weaknesses, human-ness. I think it also has to do with my reading Anthony Keidis’ autobiography, and realizing just how entirely, unashamedly, humanely fucked up a person, one of the most gorgeous men on the planet (esp. when he was younger) is/was. And telling it as though it was a trip to the supermarket. But of course, in his field it’s a bit of a badge of fame.

The sickening feeling I am talking about – big scandal in Israel over the use of old people for painful, unnecessary, unethical and illegal medical experiments, and I am talking en masse here. And on the margins, what was revealed by – I am not sure what the name in English is but he is the person in charge of criticizing the internal affairs of the state – is that hospitals have been recycling unrecyclable equipment, as an economic strategy, not as a one off incident. And then in the talkback comments of the online papers, hospital personnel coming up with stories of patients dying from infections (something which "the critic" had also mentioned), of doctors pocketing used equipment from the public sector to take into the private, without sufficient sterilization, so that people died.
And I can’t help thinking, the only two guys I had unsafe sex with, 8 years ago, they both have girlfriends now, I know it, and I had an abortion that year, in a private hospital, which sounds posh, but it was not like that – the public hospitals went on a sudden strike and all the women scheduled for abortions were redirected there, it was some hole in the wall clinic in an industrial area, and all of us women were wheeled in on what was basically a conveyor belt, and then cooped up in a tiny locker room to dress when they sent us home, with some women puking their guts. I remember getting home, still dazed from the anesthesia, and realizing there was a hygienic pad just stuck halfway up my body. In short, they treated us like animals, like cows sterilized on a ranch or whatever. And I can’t help thinking, my social worker T. said that the chance that I infected B through oral sex is so low, that she wouldn’t be surprised if he got it through, say, a dentist, and I defended the Thai hygienic practices, but I know that he went to that small town dental place to have many teeth removed that year. And I can’t help thinking, my own country turns out to be no better than T’s true or misconstrued perception of a third world country, and who knows, maybe that’s how I got infected. I cried after realizing this, it was like one a.m. and the realization sunk in. I cried for these old and sick people who’d had terrible things done to them so that medical doctors can have one more notch on their belt of publications, without their consent or with their consent when they were cognitively impared and had no idea what was going to happen (and a big scandal is breaking out in the army too, with soldiers being forced to take drugs for medical experimentation). And I am so afraid for my parents, they are getting old in that fucking shithole, please pardon my French but I am experiencing some disquiet, some discomfort. Yesterday at Dutch class everyone had to say something about their country, and people were on about the landscape and so on. I didn’t plan what I was going to say, and I always end up slightly nervous when having to speak to a group, even informally to a group of peers, so I ended up mentioning the war and violence, and saying that nevertheless Israel was a very interesting place. And afterwards I beat myself over saying that, a little bit, but I realized, it wasn’t only the type of violence people see on CNN that I was talking about, but the violence I experienced, the violence that allows doctors to kill a holocaust survivor who survived Mengele’s “twin experiments” in Auschwitz, only to die after something awful was done to her, in the name of pseudo-science, behind closed doors.
I fear so much for my aging parents, and for myself too, because I have an interesting disease with a myriad of interesting complications, was just reading the brochure of one of my drugs and read that 48 weeks after usage begun bone density was diminished (no, bone “toxicity” appeared) “in patients”. And they don’t even say how many patients. And I feel like a guinea pig, which I don’t want to be. Still healthy, still on top of things, still young and pretty and un-telling, but I am less than a year with these drugs. And I am so scared, and now much less trusting. And sickened.

Control

2006-10-09T00:36:00.000-07:00

Monday morning. I wake up naturally at 8.30, having gone to sleep shortly after midnight and slept uninterrupted. By 9.30 I am dressed, bag packed also with gym stuff, since I have a long day, Dutch class and the going out to eat with friends. I dreamt that I was riding a bicycle, alone, taking numerous risks, not unlike my rollerblading days, arriving at some derelict army base where I wasn't supposed to enter, at al,, dead ends, slopes, rounding corners, and I dreamt that P. told me I put on a few pounds and need to watch my weight. he was uncomfortable saying it, in the dream, that is, and I completely accepted it.

In real life, P. tells me I am especially pretty. He loves my body. But when I wake up from these Stokrin-dreams, they don't leave me, unlike real dreams, I carry them around as experiences.

I am listening to Evanessence's Evereybody's Fool as I type this, and the intensity of their music and the truthfulness of their lyrics matches my eccelerated heartbeat, my constant running around, my acute emarassment. I have reached the stage of considering myself a phony, a complete fake. I chatter nervously, I make faces, I flinch. I have somehow in my quest for control lost all control, and I feel like people are just phantoms in the periphery of my own frentic existence. I feel like an addict, hiding out.

When we left the Indonesian restaurant last night a woman approached us, she was tall and thin with long blond hair and a beautiful vacant face, made up, dressed up, but something just wasn't right. She was young, quite probably younger than me, but she looked old in the way surgically enhanced people do, when you can't place their age, and gave us the usual bullshit about having lost her bank card and needing to get to wherever, which usually comes from a much grubbier person, and did this with so much intensity, that she deserved money just for the acting. But of course she was a hopeless addict. And that's how I feel, a lier, a phony, a fake. Conning people into helping me, into thinking I can do this job, making contacts worldwide and weaving people into my net of deciept. And when I try to be sincere I feel an even worse lier, as if only I know the extent of the darkness within me, and only I know how filthy I am, and that I don't deserve to live, certainly not like this: clean-cut, happy, well-fed, well-paid, with a boyfriend that loves me and wants to show me to his family, and bosses that give me credit and actually let me carry on with this charade. And not because I have HIV, but because the HIV confirms everything that I have always thought about myself, and despite the HIV people don't realize (those that know) that I am hopeless.

Of course, there is s struggle inside me. If I really felt this way all the time, and there were no other voices to counterbalance this one, I would top myself.

Wind

2006-10-07T01:25:00.000-07:00

I woke up to a beautiful but very cold day, the last days have been getting increasingly colder, but now the open blue sky that didn't have more than a few floating feather clouds when I walked from P.'s place minutes ago became gray, low and menacing, and rain is streaming down the windows. I am in my living room, I left P. sleeping his weekend sleep at his place.

It was a hell of a week. Somehow I lost inner balance. But only somehow, because I didn't lose control. I mean I lost control, but not uncontrollably. One of the things that stuck with me from the "Do One Thing Different Book" is that the author says we all have limits. Obese people maintain a certain weight. Junkies stop at a certain level of addiction. We bully and torture ourselves, but up to a point. We travel the rut, back and forth, repeating our errors, our pains, our remedies, and the rut deepens gradually, but rarely do we push out. What happened this year I think, and that is why it was the most beautiful, yet difficult, year of my life so far, is that I stopped doing that. Not all the time. I still go back to the comforting stink of self-abuse (mostly verbal/mental). But I was forced to try something different. And it is terrifying. I am so scared sometimes I feel frozen, but I keep moving on, and somehow with the movement, I get over the next hurdle.

I remember when I used to rollerblade, I'd go into these vacant underground parking lots on the weekend, five or six or more levels into the ground, and they would have these black rubber speed bumps I would jump over, which I would strain to see in the growing darkness of those pits as I ventured further, picking up speed, going down slopes between levels, rounding corners and never being quite sure whether the odd random car of a productive weekend worker would appear or not until I passed on to the next level, and I would be so scared, gaining momentum in those creepy spaces so far from sunlight and air. I would be so scared that a patch of petrol or engine oil would send me slamming into the cement, but I kept going. My knees were sometimes shaking before I set, my pulse was eccelerating and my hands got clammy even as I fastended my blades on. I was so scared. But afterwards, when I was done and emerged into the fresh air and sunlight, I was exhilirated. And whenever I got over my fear, I felt such a buzz, even when no one was there to watch me, because I often went alone. But that is a theme in my life, fighting the fear, because even the simplest things sometimes scare me, like facing my bosses, my friends, even my bosses, asking my collegues to move some social gathering into my apartment, inviting people over for a birthday party, facing P.'s family, childhood friends and neighbours over Christmas and New Year's, speaking publicly about my work to a room full of strangers or worse, competetive collegues, speaking a strange language in a strange land, another strange land, going home. Sometimes I get tense making love, I get performance anxiety, I fear taking too long to come, or sounding wierd, or looking wierd and unattractive, pathetic, no matter how many times I have been told that I look incredibely sexy.
My bosses are talking now about sending me alone to a massive Asian Giant I have never visited, to manage my own project, and I fall back on my disease, and rightly so, but I wonder how much of that is an excuse, because I am afraid, just like I would be if I did anything else, and there are no guarantees in life, and the only thing certain is that we have to live it to the full, and the wind gathers me and places me in different places, with different people, situations, environments - so many in the last years, so many in my life - sometimes it lays me down softly, sometimes it smashes me so hard I break something, but keep going like I did when I broke my arm, like the sun that just reappeared after that short violent downpour that started and finished while I was typing these words. And the whole planned year lies ahead, the timeline I made with my bosses, schedulled full of events, conferences, trips, and my own personal timeline that I never verablized - love, family, friends, hospital, writing, work with all its many dimensions, learning new things, unlearning old, trips to new and old places, homesickness, laughter, love again... all clouds drifting in and out of my life, raining on me, letting the sun shine through, keeping me open to change, to flow, to the wind that is now coming in gusts along with the sunshine, rattling the window, shaking the yellowing leaves off the trees planted neatly in my street.

spannend

2006-10-05T22:55:00.000-07:00

Spannend is a Dutch word that has 2 meanings, the first is excited, thrilled, in the best sense of the word; the second is nervous, or tense. There is no equivalent English word.

I am just writing this quickly on a rainy Friday morning before I leave for a meeting with my bosses. They want me to go to a certain Asian country where I had planned to go for my work last year, but put off the whole thing because of my diagnosis and everything that ensued. I have never been there. Always wanted to go there. That country doesn't allow HIV+ in, at all. I will have to talk to the doctors. I will have to see if I am up for the trip. I was nervous about leaving P. and my life here, it seems that everytime something settles into any kind of routine a wave of change rolls through. I am worried about a million things, so much so that my temples ache and my neck is stiff, but I am also incredibely excited. It set of a whole wave of ambition for me, so that I hardly slept in the last couple days.

Now I am censuring myself, because I always imagine that someone from work might be reading this. But if so, then they already know who I am, I guess. They want me also to go to 2 comventions, both of which take place at the same time, one of which is in Asia, so that would be handy to combine with that country I am talking about.

And P. asked me to come to his family over Christmas and New Year's, now they live where the other convention is going to be. But I didn't agree yet. I told him I have to consider. we'd just finished a great and improvised meal of mussles and potatoes - I went by the supermarket after work and they had a deal on a kilo of mussles and I was too tired to shop around anymore so I just picked them up, having never cooked mussels before and in fact hardly ever saw them being cooked I was nervous [mussels being not-kosher and also very expensive in Israel]. The package said to boil them in water but I wanted to fry them in a work with vegetables and spices, and I did, and they opened up beautifuly and tasted great, and P. was so impressed, because we hadn't planned a big dinner, in fact he was busy working and just dropped by for 1/2 hour, which turned of course into something much longer. Maybe it's the mussels that did it, but he asked me what my plans for Christmas were.

He is going home for 2 weeks. I knew I didn't want to stay here over Christmas, but two weeks with his family! I am thrilled that he asked me, a little resentful because he didn't come to Venice with mine, but especially nervous about hanging out with his family for that long. I don't think I should go for that long, and then there is the control thing again. Needing to control, manipulate, make sure others' reactions to me are what I think that I need. What if I get premenstrual, or menstrual, while there? What if I get sick? Bored? Sad? Restless? His family are ultra-conservative, probabaly more than anybody I'd met, including even religious Jews. They don't speak English. His friends from home don't either. But yeah I'd still love to go. Just tha idea that he asked is wonderful. But I think I will go for a week, a few days out of which we might be travelling. We will not even be able to share a room for Christ's sake (since it is Christmas I'm talking about I thought I'd evoke him)!

What if that country I want to work in fids out I have HIV when I clear customs? I have been stopped in the Netherlands once with my stash of drugs but when I said I had a chronic disease they let me go. What if I get sick while there? It is not even like Thailand. I won't be able to say I have HIV if I need to go to a hospital.
Ditto I guess for P.'s country, although it is a first-world, EU country. I asked him, crazy controlling me, I asked him "what if we have an accident while I am there, and they take me to hospital, and I have to say what I have? What if your mother cleans my room and snoops around and finds my drugs and asks me what they are?". I have to think of all these things. He said he doesn't know how he would react, the poor guy. How would he? For him just inviting me is a big step. But he can be self-centered, I mean, I asked him when he'd be coming to IL, and he was, like, "you know how busy I am". Then again, he kind of is like myself. He doesn't like to give a promise, unless he thinks he can keep it.

I am so happy he asked me. I am so happy about maybe going to Asia again. I made a timeline of everything I need to do this year which I have to present to my bosses, and it is absolutely packed, but I am so thrilled. Yet so nervous. Spannend.

Time/fear/the right thing

2006-10-03T23:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't been writing as much as I'd like lately for the lack of it. I always seem to be on the go, I never seem to just sit and take it in. Since I had heard from one of my Dutch classmates that it is considered a bad omen to rush in & out of the house when you forgot something, the last time that I sat still was when I re-entered the house yesterday, after forgetting my mobile. i just sat on the sofa in my lovely spacious living room and looked around. It was serene. But I am never around to enjoy it, and when I am around I am always in a scramble, to work, to the gym (even today when I decided to work from home because I have a meeting with my bosses and Dutch later), to P.'s house, outside for sport or shopping. I have written here that my life is one of the most peaceful there is and it's absoultely true, why then do I always feel short of breath, on the go? And when I meet a friend, I want other friends to be there, so i don't lose them (for instance having made plans with C. to go out this Sat., I already thought of combining my other friends, at least my girl friends, but it is a problem, because you want intimacy, and I don't think I can have that with too many people around, esepcially when guys are there it always turns into rucous laughter, which is great, I mean, anything to escape small talk, but is also a kind of small talk. i have discovered though that I can carry some sort of inner stability with me and bring it even to the most strained social circumstances, just by really seeing, really talking to the person in front, and trying to sense them).

Yesterday I saw again that woman that I deeply distrust and dislike. I wouldn't even say dislike, except she causes a big feeling of miscomfort in me, and I wonder what it means, and what traits of me that I am suppressing I see in her. Nummero uno would be, I think, the lack of control. She is always in a scramble, like me, and always gives the impression that she is on the improv. If only she''d walk into a class and say, look, I haven't had time to prepare, let's read through this together. But no, she will always do one dishonsest thing or another. Thank God I don't have direct contact with her, though still more contact than I'd like. Quite frankly, she scares me. The only consollation I have is that others feel the same, and I ain't the only mental one. Though there is something soothing about finding out that fear of something is only in one's mind, and that others don't share it.

Fear. Went cycling out of town with P. yesterday, then back into town at dark. and since I am a complete newbie to cycling, there were a couple of hairy incidents where, say, a big van was blocking our side of the road, and I had to overtake it, but bikes were coming from the front and back, and I thought I'd lose my balance, so i just dropped my feet to the floor. The Dutch, unlike their reputation for wild, impatient and even violent cycling, were very nice about it, considering that a full-grown woman nearly caused a pileup. But I decided it's too early for me to cycle in the city, unless it's a Sunday. being able to get on a bike and go is such huge progress for me, beacsue I thought I'd never learn it, and is nothing short of a miracle in my case. So I will just let myself get used to it, slowly. But anyhoo, at one point me and P. were cycling along this narrow bike path atop a rise between two canals, out in the country, and it was really steep on both sides, and I felt as though I was walking a beam (something which i always dreaded being forced to do in PE as a child) or a tightrope, especially as this path was studded with these rails they put to prevent animals from passing, and my stomach really tightened. I remember my doctor at the HIV ward telling me not to do anything I was afraid of, refering to my planned solo trip to Asia, which got cancelled since I broke my arm, and I must say that was a relief, and once again proof that when we let go, the Universe takes care of us - yes I know this is New Age bollocks, and I know, that for billions worldwide this is the most cynical utterance, since they are dying, being killed, or just living out a hellish existence because of poverty, the decisions of various politicians and generals, and basically the entire stinking and irreplacable capitalist big-fish-eat-little-fish patriarchic - even if women like Kond-oh-lee-zah are now involved - system. But I have to take a different view on things, for my sake. I have to beleive that when I lose control, I gain control, something which the scary woman obviously lacks, over my emotions, my stability. Anyway i went off again, what I was going to write is, I replied to the doc that if I didn't do anything I was scared of, I'd do nothing at all, because basically everything makes me nervous, especially in a state of mind like this. I suppose that he meant, look inside you, sense your heart and gut (are they the same?) and follow through. Do the right thing. For you. Something like that. Well the right thing for me was to call P. and ask him out, and then take the plunge a few weeks later and reveal my status. The right thing was telling P. that I infected B. even though he hasn't given me oral sex since and I sure do miss it ;0). The right thing was staying home today and working for home and going for a sprint in the once-again (once-again! now isn't that a theme) beautiful weather. But all of these things are also nerveracking. But they are the right thing. For me.

Love & forgiveness

2006-10-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

Today is Yom Kuppur, it's a day to say sorry to all those you hurt, and a day to fast and repent for your sins. Even though I am not religious, usually I would fast on this day and spend the time thinking. But I consider myself exempt, since I am on the meds.

Today is the first time P. said that he thinks that he loves me. We spent the whole weekend cycling. I have always thought that the guy who will bother to teach my how to cycle will become my husband, it was always an immensly difficult thing for me to learn, involving motor skills, so a very different kind of learning than what I am used to. And now I learned it. My whole body is cramped from the too-small bike (the kind only kids use in the NL) but I learned it.

Today is also B.'s birthday, I had sent him an ecard, and got a very touching thank you card back that brought tears to my eyes. We will always love each other, and always be friends. it feels wonderful to keep such a good relation with an ex. He does not blame me for infecting him, and I, well, I can't say that I forgive myself, but I can say that I didn't know, I just didn't know.

I also got an email from someone whose writing meant a lot to me, and that was very nice, I hope to be able to meet him in a month or two. He wished me luck on my quest for love and acceptance, and I can't think of a better wish. Also, my virtual ties with other pozzes are getting stronger, both in Israel and worldwide.

I am so touched by all this, and by my friends R. & C. my wonderful parents, my friends at home and abroad, and my brother. I feel so blessed in this life, to have been sent all these wonderful people, also T. my social worker and T. my behavioral therapist, and the medical staff, and the people that I know, and knew, and will know, even my bosses and collegues, and people that I know only from the internet. I really have been surrounded with the most wonderful cast of people in my life.
Today, I feel very strongly, even though I am not going to do anything religious, that there is a God. I got a stress headache watching "inside Africa" on CNN today, all the terrible pain and suffering there, and in other parts of the world, and global warming, and what goes on in Israel/Palestine. These are all evil things that people do, but I do feel there is a God, looking out for us, trying to help us help ourselves.

I have to go (not run, just leave) before I start crying on the keyboard, but it is a good kind of crying.

Easy?

2006-09-29T00:14:00.000-07:00

I have to learn to take it easy. Yesterday when “my” social worker saw me, that’s what she said too. I am too controlling, I try to control the reactions of people around me, their thoughts even, and I spend way too much energy on that.

But in the last months, I have been slowly easing my grip. I mean, I am far less controlling than I was. Even in bed, I learned to let go.

My life always seems to me one giant mess, like a knot, whichever side I try to pull the thread out off, tightens the knot. There’re just so many obligations! Work, love, friends, writing, taking care of my appearance, the gym, shopping and looking after my house, keeping in touch, the net, reading, learning Dutch. Then there’re things that I would like to have in my life, but don’t or hardly do: meditation, volunteering, traveling (and planning that travel), yoga, more sports, more good movies, more good books, writing a book (and not this blog), painting.

Yesterday I updated this blog from work, but there was a bug in the system and everything I wrote disappeared. Course I was frustrated, but didn’t have time to dwell on it, because I had to run out for a meeting, and other things were calling. All I know is, something gotta give. I hardly have time to live my life, let alone document it. But it’s happening. And it’s pretty damn wonderful. Besides the sad, dark bits, or even because of them (where there’s no darkness, there’s no light, right?).

Just very briefly, while my oatmeal cools and before I rush out to the supermarket and then work, the events of the last days:
I told P. about B. and he was the sweetest. But before that we talked about our families. Or rather (something which I feel slightly ticked off with myself about), he talked about his, and I cut him off and began to talk about mine. But there you go: the control thing again. How to control a man. How to keep him with you (despite having HIV; maybe I should write one of this manuals). Number one rule: listen when he talks and let him finish, or else.
Anyhoo, I made some pretty serious revealing breakthroughs about my life in the historic perspective, something which I would probably have had to pay a therapist for years to achieve. Just by telling someone about my parents, and grandparents.

God I love him.
I have hope that B’.s diagnosis is false and caused by the malaria (which he is being treated for; he isn’t being treated for HIV). But I might never know. As long as he lives for years and years and years with HIV diagnosis and isn’t told to take drugs (because his CD4 counts don’t go low enough) I guess I can live with it. I guess, because the chance that I infected him isn’t great, but it’s real. It may well have been me. But, it could be someone or even something else. Yet, even if I was 100% certain it wasn’t me, and in fact even if I knew he is negative and “just” has malaria, I’d help out. I owe him that much, for sticking by me, despite our terrible rows (one time I thought he’d kill me, after I pushed him) we did a lot of good to each other, I wouldn’t be here, in fact I don’t know if I would have survived, literally, the last years, without him, and he, well, would probably be in some kind of hell or another.

And asides from all this, he is a human being, and a friend.

I could write for hours now, really, about everything I figured out last night and this morning, and about how grateful I feel, but the day calls (not to mention various unproductive activities on internet forums), so I will be off.

I am dying, itching, craving to write, for real.

Letting go

2006-09-28T03:08:00.000-07:00

Since coming back, I have been superstressed again, not so much because of the unbearable pressures of my daily existence, but because of a fear of the future and a need to control so many aspects of my life, including others' reactions to me. Even the existence of this blog has burdened me, and has become another menacing chore that I don't seem to get around to, as well as other nice aspects of my life such as the gym, friends and new acquintances that want to go out, reading, writing, cleaning my place, doing my hair, showering... you get the picture. I am overwhelmed. I know I need to prioritize, but I can't. I feel guilty for wasting P.'s time when he should be working, even though the way I do it is fun for both of us. I feel a constant need to control everything, but I am unable.

Before another binge siezes hold of me, and before I flip out again, I run into a quote in one of the web forums that I frequent. It is from a book but I don't know which one because no credit was given, so no copyright was violated on my part:
"Become an Allow-a-HolicThe reason why we suffer is that we are trying to have a different experience than the one that is happening to us right now. We are not allowing for the current feeling, thought, or experience to be happening in our body and resist it immensely. By not giving it "space" or permission to be here now, we are denying that the Divine exists within everything. By internally fighting with our current experience, and trying, wishing, hoping or praying that it will change, we are not honoring the Universe as our most powerful teacher. The ironic thing is that the very moment you start allowing yourself to FEEL the apparently negative feeling and or experience exactly as it is showing up in your body right now, you stop resisting it and thus the suffering ends instantly.Becoming an Allow-a-Holic is letting the Universe be exactly as it is.The truth is that there is very little you can do to change the entire Universe, and you might not necessarily even want to change it. If you take a step back and look at the entire massive cosmic picture of it all, it'samazingly synchronistically perfect just the way it is. Your ego may not agree with the way things show up in your personal situation here on planet Earth because the ego thinks its role is to fight, argue, and try to manipulate Reality so that it can get what it thinks it needs to be happier. True happiness is a state of inner balance that allows for everything to be exactly as it is. While your ego may not like this way of defining happiness, experiment with the state of allowing and notice how your body reacts.No matter what your situation is, how stuck you think you are, or how profound your pain is, you have the power to shift it completely right now.The power is in learning to allow for it. Give each negative FEELING you have full permission to be here now. Allow it to be 100%, not 99.99% because that small .01% means that you are not really letting go, and experiencing the magic of doing so. The moment you let go and really hit 100% allowing, your suffering will disappear. When the suffering leaves, you will learn something very valuable about yourself. That you are the master of your life and have the power to release anything you need to fromyour life."

I wish I could implement this in my life, I wish I didn't care so much what others' opinions of me are, I wish I didn't care, period.

I know there will come a stage when I will have to let everything go, even this blog, if I want to keep surviving, because I will need to re-prioritize. It's not getting much of a readership, and I have not been promoting it (even though I know how, all I need to do is get into a bunch of internet forums and submit links, but I, as they say in Scottish "cannae be bothered"). I feel a stage coming on where writing fiction will become more important to me than writing about my life. I already feel how, when it comes to people, and even though this might not be the most diplomatically sound thing to do, I focus on the few that mean most to me and neglect the others. Because I have to. Because there are only 24 hours a day and I only get to use about 12 of them, and if you consider that I am supposed to be working during 8 (but where do you think I am when writing this, huh?), and that I have to buy food, prepare and eat it, have sex, keep in touch if only via email with my family/friends, and excercise my body at least 1/2 hour a day at the veru minimum, not to look good (I need 90 minutes on average for that) but to get the jitters out, how much time does that leave exactly? And there're other things I want to do, like plan and execute travle, whether short or even long distance, and maybe paint, and dance, and cycle out to the country... etcetera, etcetera. I am just unable to handle all of that with the time that I have, and can't survive on less than 7-8 hours of sleep, and am tired of eating and thinking in front of a screen.

Phew... now that I let it out, the bottom line is, I have to set some kind of living scheme for myself, with room for all the things I want to do, and need to be doing. How do people manage this and have kids and have a house/car and spend hours a day in traffic, like my parents, is beyond me. But life doesn't get simpler, just more complicated, and I must learn to live in it, to live it.

Comments

2006-09-26T11:28:00.000-07:00

I try and try to change the settings and emable comments on my blog, as before, as well as cancel the backlinks, but no matter what I do and how many times I republish it doesn't change. So I will put an email address here, and anyone who wants to comment can comment there, and I will just quote them. Some of my few readers already have my address, and I will make a new one for comments.

Gotta run now, as always...

never been tireder

2006-09-26T07:31:00.000-07:00

But because this blog is about me being notperfectatall, I will go ahead and post anyway.
Venice was a blast, a word which has 2 connotations (at least in the land of suicide bombings). Yes, it was awsome, and the most beautiful place I have seen out of many, many (though not enough!) beautiful ones. Pics don't amount to a fraction of the 'sphere of the place. Of course, being with my lovable family wasn't easy, for almost a week. I kind of lost the plot, not in public, but within myself, and ended up completely over-reacting to a random text by P., in which he wrote that he misses me some of the time, not all the time. I cried, I couldn't sleep in my room in a beautiful apartment right on the Grand Canal, I contemplated suicide (yes I was menstrual), I felt physical pain whenever any Italian man stared, commented or touched, because I felt like a facade of some kind of beauty, rotting underneath, and if they only knew... I had the usual issues: envy of my sister in law, awe of my brother, and a terrible consuming fear for my wonderful parents. I missed P. I was not able to spend any time online save for the random minute, and I chainsmoked and ate tons of wonderful cholesterol laden food. And I got an email from my Thai ex whom I apparently, though not certainly, have infected. I am not sure, I am not even 100% sure if his prognosis is correct (no Western Blot where he is, and he has been diagnosed right in the middle of a hospital stay for malaria).

My mind blew... surrounded by all this beauty, and the people I love most in the world, and without any of my usual remedies, save for the smokes and some wine/beer, without even work to distract me. Thank God I had my most excellent Zadie Smith book, as well as Anthony Kiedis' autobiography.

I want to write about the issue of infection. When I was diagnosed, having had a Thai BF, I first assumed he had infected me, although he swore over and over to have been pronounced negative just before we met, and although we never had unprotected sex and there was never any condom disfunction of any sort. To get right down to the gritty details, I have never let him come in my mouth either. I told my doctors this, and in combination with my counts they said that it wasn't there and then that I was infected. But did I infect?! He used to give me oral sex. But then, oral sex (at least the way we did it) surely can't be that infectious? When I started going with P. we went to a sex councellor from the local aothority and told her in detail what we do, and she set no restraints on that.
It could of course be that me and my ex were infected in 2 different places by 2 different people. But if his negative result was accurate (and that only way that it could be inaccurate was if he'd had sex with a poz 3-6 months before its date), then it is me, me who infected him. And although he isn't mad at me, I am mad at me. And this adds up to me getting an email from a seemingly nice poz while I was away, having my disbelief-in-P. crisis, and makes me think I should stick to pozzes only. But whenever I had this kind of thought in the past, my social worker at the hospital, whom I meet Thus thank God, did her best to dismiss them. She doesn't believe that pozzies should stick with pozzies. And anyway, I am on meds and undetectable now which reduces the chance of infection (something which the sex councelor also pointed out).

I thought a lot about whether I want to post this. I didn't tell P. about my ex, because I don't want to bring someone else into our bed and because him and I have consulted with the relevant people, and I am not keeping any details of my condition away from him. I know this is controversial. I know a lot of people, maybe most people, would tell me to F off and be celibate. But I am in love. And though it would be easier to be in love with a poz, I am in love with a neg. So, when I came back late last night and he came over with a salad, we made amazing love (no oral... I felt unable to recieve.... have to talk to my social worker first). We slept together like siamese twins. And if the rain stops, we'll cycle together this evening, practice so I can cycle to the horse farm and ride horses sometime. And tomorrow, I will take it easy, go to the gym, try to get my health back on track, try to catch up on rest, try to breathe which is so damn easy to forget when life is rushing past me, try not to fear so bloody fucking much for my parents, for my brother and sis-in-law (and no I do not want them to seperate!), try to enjoy the beautiful, painful gift of my life.

I have also wired my ex some money, not for comepensation, but to help out, because he is alone, his circumstances are so hard, and he had to borrow money from his boss for his malaria hospitalization. But I feel so dirty, so guilty, so... rotten, yes, rotten from the core.

I have to go lie down for a bit. Everything hurts, but mostly my heart.

almost leaving

2006-09-19T02:51:00.000-07:00

I am almost leaving for Italy to meet my family, and feeling completely grumpy, disoriented, drunk with fatigue, bloated... all those nice emotions that go with my 2 week long PMS. I didn't sleep enough, and am just unable to drag myself to work. Instead, I am going for a jog in the park, and I don't care if it rains, I am just brimming with negative energy, over everything really, even my lack of suitable baguage, my too-tight clothes, the weather in Venice which is supposed to be showery while here it will clear up as soon as I leave, all the appointments and commitments lined up when I return, the 2 Dutch classes I am about to miss, various people demanding their share... everything just accumulates, for no reason at all, because the nice people were understanding, and I have put borders for people, and my behavioral therapist has emailed me some relaxation excercises, and everything is going according to plan, and I can take the whole day to rest if I need to, and if it clears up later on, both the skies and in the fog of fatigue that enevlops me like webs of sticky cotton candy, I might even go cycling out of town with P. for a bit, and feel my chest expand with the freedom.

So I will be offline for about a week, and transported into a whole other dimension. Not only with all of my (nuclear) family, but also in a country I have never been to, where I must travel alone. I hope I can stand it. I hope I don't need to prove anything to anyone, I hope I don't feel waves of antagonism, resentment and jealously towards my sister in law, and expahration towards my parents, and despair towards my brother's inherent selfishness. I hope I can just chill and relax. I brought everybody presents, and I hope that in return they won't wear me out and drag me all over the place and not give me some peace and quiet which I desperately need. Wish me luck, and Happy New Year to all my Jewish readers out there (haha).

Incedentaly, I have found a note I traveled with when I came here about 2 weeks after being diagnosed, against doctor's orders and without any health insurance whatsoever, with a CD4 level closer to zero than to 200, in the dead of winter, to try to get Z. at least to talk to me. I will copy it here, as a reminder to myself that everything is changable, even though it embarassed me to read this teenage rumble, but I know that the way things happended between me and Z., the brutal abruptness of the severence (3 days before I was scheduled to go back and move in with him), and of course the shock of being rendered (as I saw it at the time) eternally unfuckable, untouchable, really threw me back. Patience missy, patience...

"Life is too short
and too precious to waste
on prejudice and sterotype

What happende to me could
happen to your sister or niece -
you don't know that

One month is short
But long enough to have real love

This love is real and nothing
taht you say or do will take it back

You can call it brain chemistery
or being 14 years old -
nothing will change the fact that
we loved each other

Love is Power
Without it we are nothing

ever since I met you I have done everything to keep you happy, interested, peaceful, satisfied. I had thought that you have been through a lot of awful things in life and because of that you emerged a strong person, someone who can understand me, someone I can rely on.

I know that all humans have different sides. I did not expect you to be a superhero but I thought that we could still have a beautiful life together if you got the right information and if we still loved one another. Since I have left I have spent thousands of dollars on plane tickets and calling you. You say that you will email me, but you write only 2 lines one time.
I understand that you want to kick me out of your life and forget about me.
It is too bad that I can't even get a little bit of respect from someone that wanted to be with me all the time 1.5 weeks ago. Someone that said he wanted to have kids with me, which is still possible.

The fact that you cleaned yourself after we had sex doesn't bother me. The fact that you threw away my underwear doesn't bother me although I hope you did not throw away the sweater and underwear and CD I gave you.
The fact that you don't get your ass down to the callshop and call or email me bothers me very much.
If you say that you love me, care about me, or even want to be friends, don't put me in this position.
I love you very much and I do not judge you. Do not judge me. Do not judge others.
You don't know what your XXXX friends or family would do in my position or in your position. There is what people say and what peopledo. I have crossed many lines to be with you before this. We are both buitenlanders (foreigners). we are adults. We have a choice. We have medicine, justice and God on our side. It doesn't matter if it's one month or one year. My sincerity is what matters. Are you ready to give up happiness for pain and shame?"

can't breathe

2006-09-18T17:03:00.000-07:00

Literally, I had 3 cigarettes tonight after 48 hours without any (P. only had Marlboro Reds which I wouldn't bum off him), I had a big Japanese dinner with P. and a friend of ours who is leaving here tomorrow, going home after 5 years, her boyfriend, and 2 other collegues of P.'s, and now it is 2.00 a.m. and I can't breathe properly. To be honest a bloated painful hard tummy doesn't help, nor does his constant tossing and turning in the mattress next to mine (he can't sleep either). I did drift off, but I have a tendency when I lie next to someone who tosses and turns like that to jolt awake.

The day whizzed past, as they all do. I went to work after going to the doctor to have my stitches removed (next time I should trust my intuition, I knew I could've done it myself). I was looking forward the whole day, as my tension accumulated over the past days, to my meeting with T. the behavioral therapist, but I ended up almost missing it, and comine 20 minutes late, because I was binging in my room, had several windows open on my computer, one a power point presentation, another a data file, another a web forum, and one was love letters I have been getting from a militant participant on one of the forums, who has identified himself as someone I know from the HIV forum. I don't know why this guy is so stuck on me, since we have never met, he is (presumably) HIV-, and he has obviously never seen me. It is like some kind of cruel joke. Here I am with my very real problems in another country, with my boyfriend not planning ahead and letting me go off alone to a family reunion he was invited to several times in another country (leaving Wed.), and never uttering "me too" no matter how many times I say "I love you", and the other guy is, like, "ïf it doesn't go well with you and him, know that I would marry you tomorrow". WTF?! He doesn't seem crazy, but he obviously is, and to me, that's some kind of abuse. The last thing I need in my life. I have not encouraged this guy at all asides from the odd occasional line here and there, and he knows, not only from the forum but from our correspondence, that I am in love with someone else. People are so troubling sometimes. They all seem to want something, and don't understand that I am exauhsted, and have very little to give, and the few resources I have are constantly being depleted.

T. said, close your eyes and imagine that you are in the cinema watching your thoughts on a screen, or feeling your feelings, including physical sensations. And when I was all alone with her in the small room, it really helped, as though she infused me with some of her traits. We are the same age but she has been in a relationship for 7 or 8 years, lives on an old farm with her partner, has the best job working 4 days a week doing counceling, not even therapy, but just reaching out and helping people in a practical manner like this, she is well balanced and well rounded, completely at ease with herself and the space she occupies in this world. T. would never poison herself with smoke, or let men do to her what I have always literally asked them to do to me, or bing to calm her anxieties. T. would get the job down, and her job would be entirely her own, not too big or too small, just right. But I am not T., my life is completely different (although, much better than it has ever been and that I could imagine possible; I have been yapping on and on to P.'s friends about people from my parents' generation who made huge life changes, either because they were compelled to by circumstances such as divorce or bankrupcy or because they chose to take a career path, even start globetrotting at an age when most people retire... and in all this while, I haven't said a word about myself, and nobody knows what's going on with me, and P. listens to the talk and collaborates with the lie, the pretense, that my life is, although he told me yesterday he wouldn't mind me coming out as a poz, but it's my personal issue therefore he has never told anyone of his worries, which surely must exist. Yet I know that coming clean as a poz is just one aspect, and that once you start getting real, you can't stop, and I am already in the process, and I can't stop, and the waves are washing over me, and no matter how much I will try to resist them with food and smoke, they will return over and over. My destiny.

stress/change

2006-09-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

Can't sleep for it even though I am alone in bed tonight because P. has to get up early to help a friend. My life is catching up with me, and I have hardly time to breathe, which is ridiculous, since on the surface I lead one of the most laidback flexible existences ever. It was a great weekend. I wrote a lot, starting Friday, but not in my blog. Instead I filled scraps of paper and a Word document, which I will copy and paste here, but not right now.

My mentor told me to make a list before bed of the things that need to be resolves and that it will simplify my life, but that doesn't help, as the list just grows and grows, along with ideas, for examples changes I want to implement in my work. I start fretting about all the people I have let down by not keeping in touch with, over Christmas that I don't know where I will spend, over my meeting with my supervisor after my trip to Italy this week, over Dutch classes I'd miss and will have to make up, etcetera. In short, I just start to flip. It got so bad that I ordered the homeopathic remedy from the pharmacy and took a dose on Friday, which seemed to have helped for a bit. I just need someone to cuddle me, tell me it would be alright and mean it, someone involved in my life, someone who knows everything I've been through without me having to tell them, that can heal my frayed nerves. Tomorrow I have a meeting with a councelor at work, someone who helped me out before I was diagnosed with some behavioral techniques to battle stress, but now I feel so removed from that. Whenever I've had a great day, like today, and relaxed for a bit, and not been anxious and didn't even smoke, stress raises it's ugly head. I vowed to improve me eating, too, since I had watched Supersize Me again on TV tonight, and realized the amount of junk I put into my poor body alongside those meds.

With P. the relationship is really starting to solidify, and it is like my learning to cycle, so long as I don't think about it and distract myself while doing it, it's completely fine. It's the same for other areas in my life btw, even work. So long as I keep a momentum going without too much ambition ahead, the fear remains in the margins.

Here is what I wrote yesterday [comments from today in square brackets]:

Change

This morning I wrote to one of the participants who is leaving the Ynet “love & hurt” forum (but didn’t publish it there, because of the English barrier):

and connects exactly to what I feel: do I dare to be happy?

after I left home yesterday (Saturday) I was sitting in a beautiful square with my BF and all of a sudden my ex comes along. I just said hi , even though last time he hang up on me and called me "a nasty, nasty person" after I told him I would call the police because he was demanding money from me for a private HIV test he chose to take instead of going to the free hospital clinic - and his insurance pays him back all or most of that anyway).

I didn't hate him, I didn't gloat, I didn't feel anything, I was as cool as a cucamber inside and out.

This guy cost me God knows how many wrinkles and pain and terror and crying and sleepless nights

I even dared to speak to P. really evenly and openly about our future, to express my feelings. [In fact, I think I mention that too often. The more people - my social worker, forum correspondets, friends - tell me to live in the present, the more I dread the future, and I express some of that dread to him, as well as telling him straight out - which I do hope isn't a mistake - what a special bond I think we have and he he is my best friend etc. But then, why can he say "I feel like I know you for years and years" and I can't say that? Why do I fear saying the wrong thing, expressing my warm genuine feelings would cost me the relationship because it would be too-heavy a burden on his laidback, lighthearted persona? I evene slightly regret emailing him tonight in my insomnia about a cycling date we had for tomorrow, which I have to cancel because of my Dutch course, and suggesting dinner at Wagamama instead]

Z. hurt me a lot but I must remember that inadvertly he saved my life (and of course he has his own very heavy burden to carry, but I am not willing to make excuses for someone who hurts me and objectifies me based on his personal history no matter how awful it is)

yes without him I would not have been tested, and I would have come up with full-blown AIDS within weeks

Ahhh life, it's so dynamic, it never stops still for a second, and thank God for that!!!

Lots of crisis make movement. I had a dream about the endless small talk I usually have with my parents, evening (nights really) after my dad gets home from work, whiskey and cigarette in hands in their backyard and the aging animals around us. In the dream, we were discussing my deceased dog or the cat, I don't remember, but this is all I seem to talk about with my parents when I am there, lots of small talk, just like I try to focus on some insignificant detail when I meet someone - say P.'s friend's girlfriend - at the gym and we are both working out and talking needlessly as though that would do anything to calm our respective anxieties, merely brushing them or passing them lightly as though they do not exist, which is worse than not mentioning them at all - last night (Sat.) with a group of P.'s friends wasd mostly alcohol and nicotine fueled small talk, surrounded by groups of Dutch doing exactly the same thing, and I had already some of that on Friday afternoon at a bar too; no wonder R. is my release from all that, and no wonder I find that when I am with P. the truth just pops out of my mouth whether is it "wise" or not. But there is also something reassuring, something cyclical, about small talk. We all stick to what we know, but how do we break out? Thanks to my small talk fatigue I spoke openly and sincerely with P. about next year, he also encouraged me to finish my sentences, which I didn’t know that I had a tendency to drift out of, not daring to complete them or not finding the words, discouraging myself half way through or just before the point and feeling it merely as pressure around my heart.
We all dread change and resist, for example I was at first upset by P.’s abrupt change of his plans today, from a quiet Sunday at home and possibly cycling with me to sailing with his friends, a spontaneous trip that came up after two previous ones planned long in advance were cancelled once because of the fickle Dutch weather and once because I broke my arm and he had to take care of me, but once we accept change, it is the only way to avoid stagnation (within reason). I often tell P. and others and also wrote here how afraid I am on any more change, how I want things to remain the same always, and they don’t because of the imminent threat built-in to the transience of our positions and lifestyles, as those of the people around us, but also because life never waits for anybody, aging and death and loss loom, but also birth and regeneration, just like my plants take care of themselves, and may not be something Martha Stewart would exhibit, but are still very much alive and kicking. I am so excited now, I can barely write. And I can’t wait to see my wonderful family in a few (3!) days in one of the most beautiful places on earth where I am flying for 5 days. I can’t. I am full of love and excitement and youth, I don’t even want to eat. But I eat, to rejuvenate myself, before I head out for a jog in the park and then the gym (yoga class) and make a full day out of it. Now I know why I feel that being diagnosed was a positive event in my life, because the jolting pain took me right off the predictable track I was on, and allowed me to to develop. Part of me is terrified and superstitious of even writing that, just as I was afraid to sit in the corner of the table last night where a large group of us foriegners converged, as in Israel the superstition is that if you sit there you’ll never marry. But I didn’t tell P. I told him I’d tell him later, but spoke about more important things instead. My not wanting to be in the same place 2 3 4 years from now, even though there is nothing wrong with this place.

All of a sudden, it comes to me: I am going to change the entire focus of my project. I am still going to do an online project if I can get participants, but I don’t want to be dependent on that. Not only because I don’t want to get stuck like xxx but because my project lacked soul and now I am starting to find a kernel that is becoming meaningful to me, related to my own life (I can even take myself as subject, and for sure I will take my boyfriend and some of our friends).

Now just my fear of how to communicate this to my supers in a confident way without them freaking out on me. Perhaps the best thing would be to do an analysis and bring them results. Start off with that. They already know I am concerned about the originality of my work, and that’s good, I don’t keep that harbored. Yet at the same time, this idea wouldn’t emerge if it weren’t for the influence of the surprisingly good paper by my super and the woman I dread.

And an event that would have been really meaningful and painful months ago just passed me by yesterday without leaving (as far as I can tell) any visible scars, even though I had a bit of a fearful, superstitious tendency to latch on to the fear and consider its lack a bad omen, in the same way I have to disregard a black cat or the number 13 (which I have discovered is positive in Judaism, as opposed to Christianity): while I was sitting in one of the gorgeous ancient squares eating a fresh seafood bun with P. while we met yesterday (and luckily I wasn’t alone because each of us was shopping separately and we only took a midday break together) Z. passed me by. He was so close I couldn’t ignore him, so I just said hi, with some vague hand movement, but without smiling, and he replied with the same token. On my side at least there was no hate at all, not any victory. Pretty much nothing, although that nothing of course is also something. Considering that the last time we spoke he had sent me a very passive aggressive email asking me to pay him 250 Euro he had chosen to spend on the HIV combo test (rather than do it the way I tried to set up from home, for free and fast, because he was afraid that at the hospital people would know him; but in any case his insurance would pay most of it back; and considering all the times he used me sexually, as is his way, even post-diagnosis and in my new apartment [after trying to convince me to hold his d*** while he peed?! he once sent me an angry email proclaiming that we always “fucked the way you wanted”]), I felt an overall lack of blood pressure increase and pupil dilation. In short, I was cool as a cucumber outwardly, which is not surprising, but inwardly too.

update

2006-09-16T01:04:00.000-07:00

I handwrote this morning, leaving P. in his bed, because his computer is down with some kind of viral infection. But I don't have time to copy it into the blog yet. I will later. I just wrote my mentor from poz.com. I don't know anything about her yet, but she seems to be such a wonderful person, so calm and together.

I love my apartment. Out of all the people I know in the Netherlands, I have by far the best place to live, especially considering the s***holes that most foriegners and even Dutch have to resort too. But I have new neighbours upstairs, 2 girls, and there is more noise now that I'd like. Before, i could just sit in my living room quitely, but now there always seem to be footsteps and even voices that carry through. I have no idea how quiet I myself am, but I do know that when a single guy was living there I used to hear him a lot less. Still, it's an awsome place, and nothing remains static I guess in life, you can't expect peace and quiet to last forever. They don't do anything concrete (that I can discern) so i can't really complain. Their floorboards sure creak though. A little music takes care of that, but I find it annoying. Still I am very lucky to live in a normal (and beautiful) apartment and not one of these housemilking schemes the Dutch are infamous for, and for very little money. I'd just like to keep things as they were is all. They could be much worse though.

Have to run (literally), but I will be back

Proportions

2006-09-15T00:35:00.000-07:00

Why are they so hard to keep? I almost have a stress-headache this morning, for numerous reasons. Even while I sleep I am anxious, having intricate dreams in which I mess up, let people down, run around breathless, make mistakes, etc.

And why do we take on so many responsibilities instead of just accepting our human-ness? (You'd think that was some model mum-career woman mix and not just lazy ol' me, who lives in her 30s as I should have lived in my early 20s, but with the amount of energy I spend on things that shouldn't even bother me, what difference does it make?).

I have to leave home soon, rush to work (haha, rush, as if there wasn't glorious golden fall outside - supposed to start raining today, as is normal in the NL, but when the weather is good, it's hard to imagine otherwise - and my communte involved a 10-15 minute walk through a gorgeous park and a bridge over a canal and an old city. Where no boss awaits me at my job, and if I knocked on any of my bosses' doors they would be nothing short of understanding and kind and full of humor. Did I mention that my super wants to take me rollerblading around the lake when I come back from Italy next week? And my day involves a lunch date to discuss my work, reading several things, writing several things, inserting one kind of data file into a power point presentation... when after work I have a choice between going for drink with P. and his nice friendly international collegues, to hitting the gym again before dinner and the weekend begins, and during the weekend all I have to do is buy gifts for C. and my dad and mum and sister in law for Jewish New Year's and various birthdays; why in God's name am I so stressed then?)
I know the answer of course. It relates to my previous post, regarding the amorphous threat of the future, which I can do nothing about. Why should I worry then? And how will worrying improve my condition except add wrinkles to my still-smooth face (I can't seem to stop with the 1-2 cigarettes a day with P., so at the very least I should stop fretting like this. It's increasing my blood pressure, stiffening my neck, making me feel as though I am about to get a cold).

I know that my stress has nothing to do with recent events in my life and goes way deeper, to my childhood, to events which I percieved as neccessitating flight-or-fight action (which I took, big time), to guilt that I felt over things that were completely out of my control and that I could have done nothing about, not merely as a child, but also as an adult. I know this by now... but sometimes it's hard to remember, and let it go, and let it flow, and realize, blissfully, that not everything is in my hands, at all. For example, whether P. untimately admits that he is in love with me or not, whether he allows it to happen, is completely out of my hands. As is everything else. And now I have to go out into the stunning automn and the freshest air I have tasted (you can literally taste it) anywhere. So bye for now. I might update some more later...