Features

Young Voices:
THE POWER OF POSITIVITY

Read the story of a young man determined to live his dreams

ight years later, Benni is happy, healthy and living the life he always dreamed of. He puts his situation down to staying mentally positive and, with World Aids Day in mind, he recounted his story to me in the hope that it may encourage others to do the same.
While completing a year’s national service working in a hospital, recent school leaver Benni was a regular blood donor who planned to start a hotel management course when his service was complete. With only six months until he was due to finish at the hospital he was told there was a problem with one of his blood donations and was called in for more tests. The news that he had contracted the HIV virus shocked Benni, who had only come out to his friends as gay a few months earlier. Suddenly the future he had planned for seemed far out of reach and Benni feared he would not even live to start his training.

The life changing news fell on the same day that that Benni’s ex-girlfriend was arriving back in the country and for that reason he kept the news to himself while he celebrated her return as cheerfully as he could, along with friends and family. It was not until later that evening, when he was alone with her and another friend that he broke down and revealed the dramatic news for the first time.

The reactions of his friends were as supportive and understanding as he had hoped, but the bleakness of his situation meant that Benni now found himself in a self-destructive spiral as he struggled to come to terms with a life that no longer seemed to have a future.
The turning point came when he found himself beginning the management training he thought he would never live to experience. With his viral load remaining low and his CD4 count high Benni slowly began to realise that although he may carry this potentially life threatening virus it may not be the death sentence he had feared it would be initially.

During the course of his training Benni began to think more positively for the future and drew on difficult times in his past for strength. As a child he had endured his mother falling ill with cancer and watched her fight it by accepting the support of loved-ones and by always remaining mentally positively throughout. Benni had adopted this same mental fortitude when competing in professional speed skating as a child, learning from every mistake and using each bad experience to motivate him to do better.

Applying this same approach to the situation he found himself in as a young man, Benni forced himself to accept the difficult truth that he was HIV positive and make peace with the fact that this would never change. He used the notion that there was something fighting against him and fought back in an attempt to become stronger in all ways in spite of it. While not happy to have contracted the virus he is thankful for the strength it has given him and for altering his outlook on life, making him appreciate exactly how precious his life, and the people in it, are to him.

This preciousness was never more evident to him than when receiving much needed support from his closest friends and those who treated him at the Bloomsbury Clinic in London, in particular a nurse called Diana who showed care and compassion beyond that which her job demanded.

Benni now lives in London having achieved the career success he dreamed of as a schoolboy and leads a happy life that he allows to be troubled little by his HIV positive status. He accepts this status as part of who he is, but he does not let it define him as a person. Rather, the measure of the man is in overcoming such obstacles and achieving a happy life of realised aspirations. He encourages those reading this not to give up on their dreams no matter what barriers are placed in the way, because without our dreams we are not living, we are merely existing.

And above all - think positive.