World AIDS Day 2009

Well we are fast approaching another World AIDS Day, where we are to focus on what AIDS has done to our planet, what it IS doing to your civilization and what IT will do if left the way it is progressing right now.


Somehow over the years I guess I have grown complacent to what this day really means, if in all honesty anything to the masses. In the beginning it was in all the news stories, papers and events that this day was approaching and awareness and attention was brought to this monster killer.


Over the years though the media like the rest of us I guess has grown overly weary of a problem that is still fairly rampant and in the minds of the media VERY old news sadly to say.


People frankly, and thankfully, are not dying like they once were. People are not as public and as vocal as we once were. I am not saying it is right or wrong it just seems to be the way it is-- for good or bad.


Long term survivors like myself I guess have grown weary, worn and tired. Many of us are just trying to survive day to day and make something of ourselves and our lives. Exactly why in all honesty I am attending college. To make something out of my life, and to finally feel good about myself by having a decent education. At least I have the public assistance to do it because without it I have NONE of it.


Speaking for myself the last few months I have been trying to figure out who the young man is that I was before AIDS entered my life. What did that boy want? What did he aspire to be? Does any of that matter now and is relevant to what and who I am now? Can I still achieve it and if I do will it matter? Will going to college make the difference and how can it when I am stuck in a system of poverty in order to keep my health care?


Somewhere along the way I became my disease and lost who I was as a person, as a soul as a being, frightening but very true. It became all consuming, save myself and try to save everyone around me. Talk about a Christ as Saviour complex, huh? But it was my way of live for 13 years


AIDS has taken so much literally from me it isn't even remotely funny. It could take years to begin to expound just on this topic alone and frankly most of it is very negative to say the least and a a place I wish not to visit some of it very painful and I will never be the same because of it.


Does the general public as a whole care? In my opinion NO, they don't and never will! AIDS is, has been and will be a very personal disease. Until it affects someone you know or love or your self it just doesn't matter. For the most part in the United States I have this feeling it is still this "Faggot Disease that they deserve" mentality. Sad to say that has not changed too much in the over 20 years that this has been going on. There are people who do care, who dedicate their lives to fighting this and helping those living with it but in my opinion it is not at the degree that people join the cause of Cancer. Until that can happen not much is going to change.

I fell out of the "global fight" when I lost Ron, now almost seven years ago. I just had to make myself survive that crushing blow. No one or nothing else mattered. I gave up the bigger picture, I didn't care plain and simple.

I am not by any means down playing what I have in my life now with Jim or what has happened in my life in that seven years it has been very nice, points even wonderful but there seems to be this constant piece missing, a void so to speak that is unfillable.

World AIDS Day, what does it mean now in 2009 to me. I guess it is a chance to reflect where I have been, reconnect with those feelings of joy, sadness, hope and loss. Does it change anything? Probaby not, but it has become more personal which somewhere along the way got lost as well. Does it change the planet's over all fight of this disease probably not. Does it mean I will join a global fight again? The answer to that is probably not, unless my world once again is turned upside as well as inside out.

World AIDS Day has become almost The day of Rememberance people recognize in connection to the Holocaust. Where we were then, what we did and why, where have we been since than, what are we doing to prevent it again. Along the way millions have died, countless changed forever because of it and yet somehow we continue on.

My hope this coming World AIDS Day is that somehow, someway I live long enough and healthy enough to see a cure produced for it and an apology from your governemtn and our health care that it ook so long to come about. Big hope yes--impossible NO!