HIV

Living with HIV

Testing

Interview 49: They're just ashamed I think, you know there’s a lot of… there’s still a lot of shame that comes with a HIV diagnosis.  And the young people that have come forward, there’s only a handful in the whole of the country that are trying to raise awareness, or they won't publicly show their face you know in national magazines or on TV.  And that can be, that, I don't know I think that sends out the wrong message.  It really does and you know again there are cases of people being criminalised for grievous bodily harm and recklessly possibly infecting someone else.  You know and again media attention focusing on that aspect discourages more people from going and getting tested in the first place.

Interview 22: Come out get tested. The sooner you get tested, the sooner you can come to terms with it, the sooner you can get the medication and the sooner you can live. And that's what we're here for is to live life to its fullest.

Coming to terms with a HIV diagnosis

Interview 11: But, I think it's just the fact that you need to realize no one's… no one's out there with an easy fix. And you've got to realize that life is worth living. You can't just go through life with a complete chip on your shoulder or a downer or something saying to you that, oh, why has this happened to me? It's happened, get on with…you, it’s happened you've got to live with it, there's nothing in this world is going to change it.

Interview 14: We all need a bit of sympathy sometimes, but I'm not the most sympathetic to people me I just go  just snap out of it, [laughs] you know. But that’s all I can say really, keep going. It might seem terrible now but in a year's time you might be where you’ll think differently. Because time is a great healer and you come to terms with things within yourself, even you know, it all just works itself out in  the end I think.  

So you can change even if you don't think you can, or you think that you’re ...

I was the you wor-, you know, I never thought I'd snap out of it. The position was, the position my  head was in  a year ago I never thought I'd ever snap out of that. So that was it I though it was all doom and gloom, and it was all downhill from then. But sometimes you have to hit the bottom to go up, and you can only go up when you hit the bottom anyway. The only way to go is up. Yeah. And sometimes when you have nothing, you’ve have the freedom to do anything.

Interview 49:

The only thing that made it easier for me to regain my confidence and move on from this diagnosis at a young age was realizing that, you know, I had the power to kind of deal with it, talk about it, you know, get help, you know, access the agencies and do something about it. Because I couldn't change that I had HIV, I couldn't take a magic pill and it'd be gone.

But, you know, by confronting it and dealing with the fact that I, that there are real, political, financial issues that come with being positive and that a lot of people are not educated about, you know, what's it really like living with the disease? That that was how I slowly got, you know, got my power back and felt more, you know, more happier and realized that I could do something really good, you know, with this and it not be this destructive bad evil thing around me like a cloud that used to hover over me at a young age.

Talking about HIV

Interview 25: It helps me to be able to talk about it. But some people do find it difficult to cope with I think. I haven't had anybody… no hysterical reactions nobody's run away or not wanted to know me anymore, ever. But some people have been more distressed than I might have anticipated I think. Of course in those days people did expect you to die. And indeed most, almost most of our friends did die. It was appalling carnage, and I was very lucky.

Interview 22: I feel that I would rather tell you, let you make your decision whether you want to talk to me, whether you want to be my friend, than for me to become friendly with you and to have a relationship with you, and then later on you're pulling back, and it's because you heard via the grapevine what my status is. So I come out straight to help people, you know, and give them the option if you want to still come to my house and have a cup of tea with me, then you may. But if you don't want, I would rather know from the onset where we stand.