Written by a MindOut service user willing to bravely and graciously share his story
I was diagnosed with HIV in 2011, after a traumatic sexual assault. When I was told I'd contracted HIV after visiting a sexual health clinic, it sent me into a spiral that I've never fully recovered from. I've suffered from depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember, and since my diagnosis, the trauma of it led to me receiving therapy for PTSD on top of that. Despite knowing about advancements in treatment and survival rates before this all happened, it still hit me like a ton of bricks and felt like a death sentence.
After having a year or more of counselling at a specialized trauma clinic and getting my viral loads under control to the point of being undetectable, it was time for me to tentatively take steps into the real world again. It was then that I discovered that my problems were not so much with the virus itself, but rather people's attitudes to it. The stigma was real. The people that I formerly thought of as friends, all one by one, distanced themselves from me. New people that I tried to reach out to, or attempted to start relationships with, rejected me. Who I chose to disclose things to became more fraught with jeopardy. My mental health suffered yet another knock, and my already shaky self-esteem hit rock bottom.
I came to realise that what people said on the outside, and on marches, and at pride parades, about U=U, and saying they would date someone with HIV, and that "it's just normal now", did not, in my experience, match how they reacted when faced with it head on. Whilst I try to have empathy with this position and can imagine myself acting in a similar way at certain stages of my life, it still hurts. The sting of rejection, the isolation, feeling othered, knowing what it's like to be touch starved - it's all so very painful to live with.
It's hard not to come across as negative, especially as I'm currently going through another period of deep depression as I write this, but I want to tell you, that with the support of a select few people, that have been there for me, when others were not, I'm still here somehow, 13 years later. Through compassionate support and counselling, I've learned to challenge the harsh judgments I placed on myself and adopt a toolbelt of techniques that I use daily, to try and weather the storms. The journey hasn’t been easy; and I've fallen hard many times over, but by reaching out to any counselling services I could find and accessing a great deal of help from dedicated charities, I've managed to endure and find some small flicker of hope to walk towards - to keep on keeping on.
Today, I’m undetectable, thanks to effective medication. I'm not a threat to anyone, and undetectable really does equal untransmittable. It's the stigma that remains, and it's my hope that future generations won't have to suffer in the same way I have, and that attitudes are genuinely changing, and not just unthinking memes and slogans often repeated. Until then, peer support groups like the one I attend at MindOut have been lifesaving. This isn't a service dedicated to HIV, but they have helped me tremendously, by giving me access to a space in which I can be truly honest about what I'm going through and listen and learn from the rich and varied mental health experiences of others. If you're struggling with any of the things I've mentioned, then I'd urge you to be brave and seek out the help that is out there. The world can seem very dark at times, and it seems like everything is against you, but there are people out there, when faced with the world's problems, instead of giving up, choose kindness. To all these people to whom I am indebted, I'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you, and hope that anyone else out there in great need of such kindness, will find it.