'The sex talk is not just about me. When it comes to sleeping with someone, I expect both of us to be honest with each other' (itsMuluba)
When I was 13 years old, I remembering telling myself, “I haven’t even kissed a boy and I have an STI.”I am more than the girl with HIV. A bit about me: I’m 24, living in the Greater Toronto Area and a Gemini who works as a freelance journalist. I was born HIV positive. My mother contracted HIV after my father had several affairs, and she was unaware of her status when she got pregnant, gave birth and breastfed me. We both found out that we were HIV positive when we came to Canada in 1995.
Disclosing my status would mean disclosing my mother and father’s statuses, and I would never do that. On my first real date when I was 16, I wore green and we went to watch Transformers. I had the normal first-date jitters, plus this feeling that somehow he would know I am HIV-positive. I was not ready to trust a teenage boy with that information. I wondered what would happen if the whole city found out.
And he wasn’t the only date to turn a romantic meal into a classroom session. I often get asked questions like: Does it get easier to disclose? As of right now, no. Do I have resentment towards my parents for “giving” me the virus? Long story short, no. I saw the pain and blame my mother had for herself, and even though my father and I had a strained relationship for reasons beyond HIV, he never intended for things to go this way. It takes too much energy to play the blame game.
A few months ago, I went on a date with someone I met through a colleague. My colleague didn’t disclose my status because he didn’t know if that would be out of line or not . During the date, we were talking about how I was going to be travelling for a health conference, and I blurted out my status. I looked for signs on his face of how he felt. He didn’t really give me any. I later found out that he had seen an article about me in the Toronto Star, and he was cool with it.
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