POSITIVE LIFE

My Life HIV+

Born Positive

Let’s see if I can make this story short... There is a whole lifetime of events/feelings to convey here. Someday I plan on writing my story, but this isn’t the place for that. It’s only the place for a brief synopsis. And my sarcastic take on the whole thing. ;-D

My family was diagnosed in 1989, in Colorado, after we all got the flu. My mom just wouldn’t get better. They tested her for everything under the sun except for AIDS. You didn’t dare ask a white married woman to take an AIDS test in the early days. That just wasn’t done.

Eventually she just kept getting sicker and sicker, so the doctor finally asked and to make a long story short my mother, father, and myself came back positive. My little brother was negative. Hard to believe? Especially since my mother was getting sick while she was pregnant? Well, it happens sometimes. Some say Cody’s the lucky one, but I’m not sure of that...

Anyway, I grew up positive in the early 90’s. That was not fun in the least. I was home schooled until the second grade for the combined reason that I might bring something home to my dying mother and also because they didn’t know what to do with positive children in public school back then. I might breathe on the other kids and infect them!

When my mother finally lost her fight in February of 1992 they showed up at my house in radiation suits to remove her body from my home. My family were like lepers. But we were also one of the first families to come forward as positive. After my mother’s death my dad traveled all over Colorado and the country speaking about HIV/AIDS. He educated a lot of very scared people about AIDS in a time where you were either a drug addict, a whore, or a faggot if you had HIV/AIDS. Good, wholesome people didn’t get AIDS. Especially not children.

My dad passed in 1995. That was the single most life changing day of my life. Not only was I HIV+, but now my brother and I were orphans and we were moving from our little life in Colorado to the big state of Texas to live with our aunt. It’s amazing how resilient children can be...

As a small child I was taught to hide my status. I was supposed to tell people that my mother died of cancer because that was more acceptable. It wasn’t until junior high that I finally started to be open about being positive. At that point I was not longer ashamed of what I was or worried about what people thought about me, and surprisingly, by that time, it was more accepted and understood. Sure, I had a few parents who didn’t want me hanging out with their kids and I’m sure a few boys ran for the hills when they found out, but overall I wasn’t treated too badly.

Living with HIV is no picnic, but I suppose it could always be worse. When I was young I was taking upwards of 25 pills a day, three times a day, and now I take one pill twice a day. I’d say that in itself is a testament to how far we’ve come. I wasn’t supposed to live to be 10 years old and here I am, almost 25. That’s amazing, don’t you think?

I do have a lot of fatigue, some nasty side effects from medicine, and my immune system is utter shit sometimes, but I am thankful that I am still only HIV+ and that I don’t have AIDS. At this point in my life, HIV is an everyday worry and routine, but it isn’t so bad that I’m fearing for my life. Hopefully it will continue on this path for a long time to come.

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