That anxious look I get
from loved ones is very hard to take, and all I want to do is reassure
them that everything will be all right. Complicated isn’t
it?!
When I was first diagnosed with HIV I felt very isolated. I had
a gay friend with Aids but I did not tell him about my diagnosis
as I didn’t want to worry him. He was very ill at the time
and I felt my health was OK - the last thing I wanted to do was
give him something else to cope with, so I looked after him and
forgot about my own HIV.
The few friends I told at the time were shocked and very concerned
about my health. Again, I did not want to worry them so I did not
discuss what I was going through. I became aware that I could no
longer whinge about any aches, pains, colds or any other ‘normal,
everyday maladies’, because to them it represented something
far more serious.
I coped for a while by just being in complete denial, but I began
to feel isolated and longed to be able to speak freely about my
situation, longed to meet other women in the same situation as myself.
I met other positive women for the first time at a support group.
It made an enormous difference, the relief of being able to talk,
knowing they were feeling the same things made me feel ‘normal’
for the first time in ages. I went on to running support groups
and finding out, again and again, that no matter what the cultural
differences might be, we all had basically the same problems, the
main one being how to cope with our HIV status.
Then I started to realise that my (HIV negative) friends were treating
me differently. I had always offered a shoulder to any one of them
who needed it. But what I began to find was that even if I could
see that they were going through a difficult time, they did not
seem to want to talk to me about it. Over dinner one night a good
girlfriend, having consumed rather too much alcohol, informed me
that she did not feel she could confide her problems to me as she
felt mine were so much bigger than hers...BINGO...I understood what
was going on.
I tried to tell my friends that their problems were relevant and
of course I still wanted to be confided in and |
