Lamentations for...

When Renee decided on an overnight visit to her boyfriend’s place, she did not think that it was expected of her to have sex to prove anything. They had been going out for a month already there was the pressure of a month old relation. The anticipated that the next level move.

The relationship ended three months later, six months after Renee went for an HIV test. The prospect of a new relationship was on the horizon and maybe this was the one guy she had been waiting for. Her results were positive.

HIV positive – the use of an optimistic phrase to say that one is dying turns ones approach on the casualties of life around. The word positive has a resounding effect of upbeat, alive and affirming. But when a friend says, “I am HIV positive,” there is no upbeat and optimism for her confession, no celebration for the life she is about to live or the one she has lived. Just the close up ring of death.

A mere fifteen minutes of pleasure ended with a lifetime of health risk, social rejection, daily injections and all that goes with HIV positive-ness. A philosopher Ayn Rand said: “sex is the expression and celebration of human values. You celebrate the value of the other person and express your own values.”

What expression of value is it when your close friend finds out her trusted lover has given her HIV. Knowledge about the virus and CD4 counts and that other people are living positively with the disease does not stop hate, anger and fear of death creeping to my mind.

Thoughts of: “he must have manipulated her, pressured and coercion into sex!” fill one’s mind. I think she gave him her one precious thing her life and all he did was return that with a one-way ticket to death.

But funny thing is she seems not to blame him for what happened. “I decided to sleep with him; I decided that it was okay not to use a condom, so I decided to test. I live the consequences of my choices now,”

I do not understand how one decides to get this disease, decides on death. HIV is seen as a death sentence for all that one has done, as a punishment from the gods that be; a punishment for a life not lived in an appreciated manner.

Many people we know have died, at the funeral and parties, friends and family only say; “they had a long sickness.” We whisper about them in the passages, walkways and behind closed doors of our homes. We introduce them to our friends as “the one with the blue shirt has AIDS” then their name. The sickness precedes the life Renee and spell out her death to all of us