Trying to understand other's lives sometimes helps us to understand and appreciate our own better. This is a recent Facebook post from my sister's ex-husband and my friend of 25 years. Burt is a hemophiliac. He is not gay.
"Sorry about my outburst concerning World AIDS Day earlier. Education about this disease far exceeds the need for specific political agendas. I forget that unfortunately, this disease was attached to misinformed political posturing many years ago and maybe people need to be informed of that. All I know is, I had three surgeries as a child. I was given whole blood and Factor 9 to aid in clotting so I didn't bleed to death. I was an athlete. I returned home with a type of pneumonia I should have never had.
The rest is history. My life became a nightmare. I couldn't talk about it. The fear of being called “gay” and blamed for having HIV combined with what I watched them do to Ryan White kept me silent. The suggestions of isolating us, killing us, blaming us was more than I could deal with. Suicide was not in my vocabulary, so I wore a self induced cloak made of cocaine and alcohol.
The day I walked into my first NA meeting I’ll never forget feeling so helpless. I’ll never forget carrying the weight of my secret into relapse after relapse. It finally took someone telling me “it’s an outside issue, you can’t talk about it in a meeting” for me to come out and take the chance of standing alone and I did. I almost died clean twice, but got back up and kept fighting. I would not die allowing people to think my name is AIDS. It is not. It is Burt.
The last couple years I have gained some important ground. I’m no longer detectable. I no longer have to live in fear of declining health. I fought for this peace. I fought to stay alive long enough to feel “OK.” My anger today reminds me, some pain of feeling oppressed and hated for something I played no part in causing, still follows me."
