| AIDS: I Didn't Understand |
|
|
|
| HIV AIDS - Living with HIV and Aids | |||||||
| Written by Thessaly La Force, Youth Radio | |||||||
| Monday, 15 May 2006 | |||||||
|
I never really gave the AIDS virus much thought. I learned about it in the beginning of my teens — somewhere between middle school and high school. It wasn't that difficult to understand. It was a virus. You could be positive or negative. It was exchanged through fluids. I remember thinking in freshman biology that as long as I didn't become blood sisters with a best friend I was okay.
The thing is, it never really hit me that hard. I kept myself pleasantly removed from AIDS. I had friends who did AIDS related community service, like delivering meals to people with AIDS, or promoting safe sex for teens. But I didn't understand why they worked so hard, because I felt like they could devote the same amount of time to something else. AIDS was just another project, another activity. Every year, at least one person asked me, "Hey do you want to do the AIDS walk?" or "Hey, you want to do the AIDS dance?" But when I thought about it, I realized I was thinking about the event, not the cause. I might as well be walking for the exercise. That is what it became for me: just another exercise. I'd dutifully wear my red AIDS ribbons, but I didn't get it. Then this summer, I heard my mom and my aunty talking about my mom's old job. Apparently, my mom has this friend who my aunty remembers. "Whatever happened to him?" she asked my mom. "He died," I remember my mom saying. "He had AIDS. At the end he was so thin he had to sit on a pillow, because the chair would be too hard." As I listened to them talk, it finally hit me. AIDS lurks behind the hospital curtains, the bed sheets of an invalid. I never wanted it to enter my life, and I thought it hadn't. But in reality, it's only something I had avoided. I thought I was desensitized, but I just didn't know. For Youth Radio, I'm Thessaly La Force. | |||||||
|
|||||||
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|