I feel different.

It doesn’t matter how much outreach, activism, prevention or awareness work I do, I still feel different. I live with demons in my head that remind me how dirty and ashamed I really am. Somehow none of what I do will erase the fact that I have infected blood and I am different. I am treated different by other non-infected human beings still to this day. Or at least my mind will make the reasons that people act a certain way somehow about me. “It must be because I have AIDS.” That is why they aren’t letting me hold their new baby, shake my hand or give me a hug good-bye. Sometimes it is them, but more often than not it is my low self-esteem, immune compromised, self absorbed mind that gets in the way. Making me feel so different.

I wouldn’t be asked to speak out at colleges and a university if I was “normal”. Maybe normal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but I will never know, because I am different.

I see in the student’s faces sometimes after I lecture, the look of helplessness and compassion, and that is a double edge sword for me. On one hand it makes me feel so awesome to feel so much love and respect and they applaud my courage. And then on the other hand it saddens me to see how it upsets them that my life is so painful at times and the things that I have had to go through that make me who I am today. I am different.