Activism

REACHING OUT

Less than a year ago i tested positive after being continuosly sick and not getting any better. I started off with a CD4 count of 109 and six months later it has shot up to 341. I am lucky in that I have a family that was ready to support and help but despite this i have been fighting depression, feelings of self hatred, worthlessness and the feeling of running out of time. I have trawled the Internet and have gone to as many clinics to find information about this virus. I’m having to evaluate my priorities and the “point” to my still being here, alive, etc… Not so much as the woe is me i’m dying because i’ve got HIV . Most days I just want to sleep and not wake up. I can blame the medication for my depression but the sum of it all is finding a reason to continue living… I don’t have one. Or atleast I didn’t have one until a few hours ago, I keep having to generate these reasons because I’m afraid of what I might do to myself if I don’t. I wonder about what other people go through, I have a roof over my head, a warm bed (sans the bedbugs), food I can chose to consume or not to consume, family, an income from an inane job I hate to go to day in day out, I even have a car that runs (sometimes) and I wonder about all these other people who live outside my otherwise perfect seeming world; the marginalised who are alone, cold, poor, starving and i realise i have no right to feel sorry for myself. That has helped me get up for the past week but now i’de like to do something about it, each day that i spend cooped up in my room staring at nothing is one day of my life wasted, and each day spent doing something over and over again: wake up- go to work- come home – channel hop- sleep is dreary existence and all i’ve been is someone’s child, sister girlfriend, employee and a harpless consumer of oxygen…. Not going out like that.

I’m a freelance writer and for the longest time i have focused my writing on fluff pieces because any attempt at anything else always came out shallow, colorless and pointless… To write outside the boundaries of “First” person is hard, “I” can only go a certain distance before other voices clamour for space and as weird as it sounds HIV forces the “I” to look at the “Human condition” in relation to a virus that seeks to kill off all that is good, that thrives in general malaise. This is not my disease, i cant own it, i can only own up to what i do with it… that’s me today, maybe me tommorrow will feel something else but i have to acknowledge that despite the fact that i have this… my dis-isease at the moment has less to do with HIV/AIDS than it has to do with what am i doing with the life that i have…. Hence my making contact with TAC and looking for organisations, support groups, other people doing something with their lives outside the scope of the “I” entity. So, for this week i will welcome anonymous text messages to the number 0842072292 especially from Ekurhuleni — text messages only