The Ties That Bind Us! Part 1(revised)

No other disease is so socially and politically volatile. It not only leaves the individual reeling but whole communities become torn by fear and prejudice. I am not the political person that others are. I am more concerned about the personal aspects of HIV and what has become known as STIGMA and particularly in how we create some of our own personal STIGMATIZING/ALIENATING behavior.

We all feel it. We all can sense the feeling that we are now somehow different. That we have
been changed on some deeper level that makes us alien to the people around us. Those of you
that are reading this that are gay know what I am talking about intimately. Those of you that
are not have still probably experienced this in your life at some point also.

HIV has changed us. In some it has weakened you. In others it has strengthened you in ways you didn`t know were possible. But more than anything it has made you feel different than those around you. We have this "thing" living inside of us that separates us from others in so many ways.

We talk about the stigma of HIV/AIDS and the alienation that so many positive people feel. I
am fortunate I do not have the problem of stigma. I am open about my status as a HIV positive
man both with my friends and family and at work. I have received nothing but positive support
and concern. Like I said I am Fortunate. I know that not all of you reading this have been so
fortunate. I know that you have been faced with ignorance and prejudice from those you needed
most and from those from whom you never expected it. And I don`t want to belittle your
experiences with what I am writing here.

I want to write about how we separate ourselves from the people that are in our lives. I want
to talk about how we let our fear our loneliness and our suffering alienate ourselves from the
people that care about us.The physical aspects of HIV are minor compared to the deep wounds that are caused to the psyche of HIV positive people. HIV wounds us in psychological ways that many never over come.

Feelings of Isolation, Insecurity about emotional connections, Insecurities about physical
contact, to name a few, plague Positive people. Many of whom have struggled their entire lives trying to overcome imagined short comings that left them feeling the same way.
What do you end up with then? A person that feels so unworthy of love and physical tenderness
that they begin to withdraw from socialization. Many believe that a positive diagnosis removed
any possibility of finding love. Many believe that any possibility of a long term relationship
is out of their reach. Many feel judged. This is because of the association of homosexuality
and drug use with this disease. HIV strips the dignity off of the infected. Leaving you
feeling exposed. Your personal life Highlighted by it`s presence.


There is prejudgement about those that are HIV positive that says that here is someone that has been doing something that they should not have been doing. How do we escape the humiliation of believing that people are thinking about how we caught the disease? This is a belief that many can not overcome. So they hide in fear of discovery.

I myself felt a great deal of guilt and shame. Shame because I had allowed this to happen to
myself when I knew better. Because it felt as if everyone was judging me for allowing myself
to become positive. Guilt because I felt like a hypocrite for the same reason. Guilt because I
felt as if I had failed my family and friends. And because I needed so much help.

Shame and guilt are two of the strongest emotions. They affect our lives in subtle yet very powerful ways. They are insidious. You may not even know that you have feelings of shame or guilt. This is because they are such powerful emotions that we avoid anything and everything that can remind us of the sources of our shame and guilt. We start avoiding people that are at the core of our shame and guilt-those that we have let down, those we feel will judge us, and those that we believe fear us leading us to a state of denial and alienation.

These emotions are so strong that they can even make us believe that others are making us feel the way that we do. This is only partially true.

We have to take responsibility for our own prejudices about the nature of HIV/AIDS. We all had them before we became positive in one form or another. Beliefs about the kind of people that get HIV and that we are not that type of person. That we wont get HIV because we are different, more aware, safer, cleaner, more moral, whatever.

What we don`t realize is that there is a guilt for the hypocrisy of our beliefs that doesn`t just go away. We have to learn to forgive ourselves for being human. We have to accept that we limited creatures just as much as those that we believe are the source of our STIGMA and ALIENATION. When we can forgive ourselves we can start to forgive those around us and move away from the fear and into the light of awareness. From this light we can start to change the prejudice that we perceive in ourselves and in others.