"Society blames us for having HIV."


It is my own experience, and belief, that living with HIV is not a trivial matter than can be reduced to a simple statement like 'I take a few pills a day and I'm fine'. We with HIV often say things like this to satisfy the curiosity of people 'out there' who don't have HIV. There are the medical realities—treatment, pills, resistance issues to medications after long-term use, eventual damage of HIV itself on the body and long term side effects of the medications themselves that are designed to keep us well—but there are also the social and psychological considerations.

This latter category is often ignored, because you can't see them. Often people with HIV respond to questions about what it is like to have HIV on purely a medical level, because we perceive that this is what people want to hear about and will tolerate. But to have HIV is also to know one's fair share of isolation and marginalisation within a society that blames us, to begin with, for having it.

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