My $64,000 question

there are many things i would change about myself. i've never liked my nose. the new salt and peppery hair is one too many spices in my ideal recipe. unassisted 20/20 vision is a wet dream always two steps ahead of me through consequences of both my own and not my own choosing. but these are all tangential to the $64,000 question i am sometimes asked by friends on the beginning of their own journeys. it is the question that seems to have the most obvious answer. 

thinking back to those young shoebox sized days in peckham, i can still feel the first ever scare. before the now of then even. i had a mark on my arm that froze every atom in my being- cooling the air around me. after all, i hadn't protected even the most precious of encounters so this was surely the kiss of death i had always known was coming. since back up in the mountains, reading usa today precociously. it is the same feeling i had at 7 finding out about this killer disease that older people like me got and then always died of. fresh alpine blue wind coming in from mom's window while next to me isaac cried himself to sleep after leaving ouray. frozen ice cream tummy and a head like i sneezed too hard. that feeling still accessible, but the cognitive dissonance resolving fear into action. i wanted to know more.

even growing up in texas, the long reach of the waves were so deep as to break up time in all our shared histories. big cities first, reaching out amoebalike to  smaller hubs and then into the capillaries of even the smallest of  towns. if you grew up in the 80's, at some point you found one of the wave's crashing onto your perfectly manicured front gardens and somehow affecting you. for my family, it was a painter and his lover. friends of my mother's and men whom i distinctly remember my first spark of community with. knowing who i was started with the courage of these brave men who in an instant were gone. taken by what i read about on the mountain. if it got them, i knew it would get me. and i was scared. so i learned more. 

i remember calling james from the bathroom in peckham. he had just started working on dover street. his first grownup job doing what he so wanted and most definitely was suited to do. i remember having trouble dialling his number as my head was so light and my fingers heavy. his first grownup job getting his first grown up problem. i remember him talking me down off my perilous edge of fear and calming me. he was always good at that. and he was right. it was a bruise. i had nothing to worry about. crises averted. life saved. but the metallic shock taste still lingered for days when i thought about it. little did i know that it was only an omen of much worse things to befall that one roomed world of ours.

you would think that after all of this knowledge of destiny and fear that the first thing on my list to change would be being HIV positive. and for a while, i suppose you would have been right. but only from before it actually happened. oddly enough, when it did happen it didn't really do what i thought it was going to do. instead of taking me over that ledge of self limiting terror i felt 11,340 feet in the cold colorado air it grounded me with such gentle force as to change me forever in ways i have yet to fathom.

sure, i have this visitor in my body who wants to eventually take it over. and if i let it, well that is not a good situation for either of us. but it doesn't know its own power, it is only doing what it is meant to do. doing what its purpose in this intricate stained glass reality we call now is to be. difference was, i knew things about it that it did not. i was taught well by the Talkmitts, Covingtons, and even Boardmans of this world. i was prepared in a way that not many people are lucky enough to experience after nursing james back from that sweat drenched night. believe it or not, it finally made sense to me. that fear i felt when michael and austin died was actually a gift. it drew me to learn about the monster. when james spoke my name for the first time after being intubated for months gave me the hope to learn even more about the disease. 

and now, almost ten years later i find myself on a new journey of self knowledge. it gives me the strength to tell my story to anyone who is willing to listen to it. after all i have been through, how could i ever wish my hiv away?  it has given me so much purpose in life that i would never have known without it. i am not saying that i wouldn't have had another version of this life even without hiv, but i am saying that he can stay happily living in fiction. and maybe one day, i'll visit him. but for now, i know that my immunological condition is just another fact of life like the damn hayfever currently KICKING my ass in this muggy london sprummer. there is nothing i can do about it other than respect it, live with it, and try to do some good together with it. 

it is my debt to all of the Michael and Austins of this world. every night when i take my medication i say a silent word of thanks for all of the brave men and women who went before me. i honour their sacrifice to research. i acknowledge the horrific terror they faced knowing that a gruesome and painful death awaited them. i cast hope to the moon that my children will not ever have to know this world firsthand. 

it is also what fuels this whole journey. it is what brings me such humility and gratitude when even more friends agree to take on the challenge to raise funds for the catalyst of personal discovery i am on. the Michaels and Austins of this world igniting the spark of service in hearts across the globe makes my relationship with my hiv an amazing thing and one i would never give back.

so next time someone asks you if there is anything about you would like to change, pause for thought. maybe that salt is making you look distinguished. maybe your grandkids will love your nose just like you loved your grandpa's. take pause to look around you and try to find the good in where you are, because sometimes you really have to look hard for it. but if you should fall off that ledge and find love for yourself hopefully you can then go out and try to do something to make the world more beautiful. 

seriously, all we can do is try.