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If you are going through hell

If you are going through hell

Being diagnosed with HIV is without a doubt the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through – I often describe the experience as “obliterating.” The moment I heard the confirmation I shattered like a piece of glass, and it didn’t seem like there would be enough super glue in the world to repair the damage.

Sulking in the catastrophe that was my new life, at some point I happened to remember an inspirational quote form Winston Churchill that a former boyfriend had hung on his refrigerator, but I’d never given much thought to: “If you are going through hell, keep going.”

Indeed I was going through hell. And with each day hurting so badly, it really did seem impossible to keep going through it. Reality seemed totally distorted and I couldn’t figure out how to finagle it every day. More than anything, I wanted life to go back to normal – it didn’t even matter what normal looked like as long as it didn’t involve HIV. Every day I woke up in what seemed like a bad dream.

Being told you have HIV is so much more than receiving tough medical information – it’s a full–on traumatic experience. Many diseases can cause shock and fear but the stigma HIV carries is like salt on the wound. Not only does a person fear death but also the perceptions of the world, crushing the desire to find the much–needed inner strength.

The experience reminded me of the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Some days I felt like the whole thing was an impossible mistake that the doctors would soon figure out. Other days I would try to make deals with God to somehow change the results (I would devote my life to serving others if he did). Then at times I would be just plain furious at how f*cked up life turned out.

The depression was almost debilitating. But as a therapist suggested, the anger and depression would help me tap into some very necessary emotions to move on to acceptance. I was trapped in an emotional fog and each day I had to push through it in order to keep moving forward. One day at a time, things slowly got easier.

Acceptance didn’t mean suddenly (or eventually) I would be fine; instead it was more like a transformation – a realization that I couldn’t change the fact that I was HIV positive. My brain finally switched gears and I began to cope with it instead of wishing it away, and then, with each new day, I achieved a “built–in” sense of gratitude for life.

This process was painstakingly slow. The changes seemed so subtle that it often felt like nothing was happening at all. It was not easy to distinguish a clear sense of reality when so much of it is based on fears. And in the larger scheme of things, something remarkable happened. My life never did return back to the “normal” that I so badly craved, but did eventually reach a new kind of normal. Even though HIV is no longer a death sentence, I still felt like a survivor for conquering the emotional conquest it took to overcome this disease.

I am not an extraordinary person. If I could make it out of these emotional storms, then anyone can. So when people ask me advice on how to make it through this hellish experience, I think of Churchill’s words and tell them to just keep going.

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