JUNE 23 2003

Still here, ten years to the day after finding out I was HIV-positive. When I got the news, it was conventional wisdom that very few lasted a decade. My close friend, who got the same diagnosis weeks before I did, died in front of me two years later. I went into work the next day wondering if I could last in my job for much longer, and then, when the meds kicked in, spent a couple hours a day barely conscious in my office. A year later, I lost five friends under the age of 30. But then, through the years of debilitating medication regimens, things slowly got better. My then-boyfriend found out in the same year and is also still around. We talked the other night, like two wacko Vietnam vets, recounting fears and terrors and guilt – and, yes, shame at getting infected in the first place – alien to others who didn’t live through them. Many, many more spend their own anniversaries in a slight air of bewilderment, while others look at us and fail to understand why we can’t just move on. Well, we have moved on; but we cannot and must not forget. Thanks to my amazing docs, a peerless shrink, a loving family, dedicated friends, and the love of a compassionate God, I feel much better today than in most of those early years. My immune system is faring so well that I have been off my meds for two years now with no serious deterioration (although I doubt that will last much longer). Many days, I don’t even think of my virus any more (and people wonder why I don’t support demonizing the drug companies). You feel some guilt about this – because of all those who died and all those who right now have this disease around the world without access to the treatments that could save them. But, like others whose terminal illness is in remission or, for some reason, benign, you also feel the need to live a little more boldly, merrily, fearlessly. I’m taking a bike ride this afternoon. Small gestures of living and loving matter. If only it hadn’t taken a fatal disease to get me to realize that. But I take it as an example of my Savior’s mysterious but all-powerful grace that I now do.