Optimism

No, I refuse to be optimistic about hiv and/or aids.

And no, that doesn't mean I have to be cynical either.

Realistic.

In New York, the third leading cause of death in men under the age of 65 is still aids.

People with hiv climb mountains, swim rivers, dance the tango .... and die.

Don't be silly. Honestly, who still dies from AIDS?

And no, I don't mean all the little brown babies in Africa.

In a world where people are still dying of opportunistic diseases as a result of suppressed immune systems I see no reason to lie.

I mean all the Western European Gay men whose HAART medication fails to handle the virus, whose liver gets eaten away by cancer because they are more at risk than non-hiv'ers, whose lungs rot because they smoke/have smoked and are 3 times more at risk of acquiring lung cancer.

Men who have never been tested and now see themselves as too old to catch hiv, die because the medication comes too late. Because they only find out they are infected when they wake up in the Emergency Room of their local hospital.

Men who have religiously taken their medication for 10 years or more and now die of rectal cancer, lung cancer, heart disease, stomach cancer, lymphoma's, liver and kidney failure etc. All or none of which may or may not be related to the hiv virus and/or medication against it.

Men who were infected with a hiv strain that is resistant to known drugs, who live day by day until the next new aids drug comes on the market. Brave men who sometimes just can't hold on long enough.

Men who lose faith in medicine, who turn to non-western doctors for a gentler way of surviving, who are tired of medication, tired of fighting.

No,

Being a Gay man with hiv is not something to be optimistic about.

I can live till I'm 90, but I will probably still have the problems to face that I face every day.

Chronic tiredness, swollen glands, diarrhea, opportunistic infections.

The anxiety of discovering a bruise, a mark, a sore, a pain, an ache. What is it? Its nothing. Its everything. Its nothing.

Optimism is a word we use to ignore hiv and aids.

Optimism makes it all go away.

It won't go away.

reference: New York Times Magazine