TO TELL OR
NOT.....
TO TELL
page 1 of 6
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My ex-boyfriend once said that after his diagnosis, it was like "coming
out all over again". A year and a half after testing positive, I
can now see his point.
Everyone reacts in different ways of course, and I went through a number
of stages.
The first was to pick up the phone and tell everyone I could think of:
my best friends, then my not-so-best friends, then anyone I knew I could
count on for a reaction. I had to force myself not to blurt it out to
the girl at the checkout in 'Sainsbury's Local'!
On the whole, my straight friends were the most sympathetic. Some of
my gay friends had a tendency to treat the news as rather passé,
and one even skimmed over my diagnosis quickly, in order to talk about
how it was time that HE went for a test.
My second phase was to calm down a little, and I regretted being so quick
off the mark to call a few of those 'B-List' friends. Thinking about the
virus all the time was
still the order of the day, but I tended to think more, and speak less.
