When I woke up in a Little Rock, Arkansas, hospital in 2003, I didn’t know where I was, or why. I was informed by medical professionals that I was very sick – so sick they’d put me in a drug-induced coma for the better part of the last month.
Then I was informed of the diagnosis: AIDS.
I don’t use that word for dramatic effect (although it works, doesn’t it?). That was, and is, my diagnosis. Even though I’m on successful treatment with an undetectable viral load, it doesn’t change that I’m living with that diagnosis.
A common denominator for all of us living with HIV or AIDS – 1.3 million people in the U.S. and 36 million worldwide (according to the CDC) – is the violent stab of fear that comes with the words, “You’ve tested positive for HIV.”
Fear of stigma; being shunned and disowned by family, friends, and community; sickness overtaking your identity and your life; and a horrible, agonizing, lonely death.
HIV and AIDS prevention and care have made miraculous advancements since the dawn of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s. If you’ve seen any commercials for HIV medications on TV, you know that with successful treatment, people living with the virus can have “virtually” the same life expectancy as someone not living with HIV.
(You also know that HIV-ers go to a lot of picnics with our multicultural friends, participate in many fun runs, and go on very chaste-looking dates.)
There have been amazing prevention tools added to the fight, the biggest being preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medications. They block the life cycle of the virus, protecting you from the spread of the virus.
All of these advances, brought to you by scientific research, mollified a lot of fear. The panic, terror, and dread that come with this diagnosis are now softened by the fact we have medications to keep people living with HIV and AIDS alive and healthy, and to prevent infections in the first place.
But now the GOP is proposing massive funding cuts to HIV prevention and care programs, and the entire population of people living with HIV and AIDS is terrified.
Fear is the point.
Everything the Trump administration is doing is to instill fear. ICE coming into communities. The militarization of big cities. Tariffs that make small businesses and farms go out of business and everything more expensive. Cuts to Medicaid. Work requirements. Cutting funding for medical research. Criminalizing trans people.
It’s all to make us afraid.
And it’s working. I’m walking through my life today more stressed and frightened than I’ve been in decades.
If proposed cuts to HIV funding go through unchallenged, I, along with millions across the country, will not have access to care. We will get sick, and die.
I’m living in that fear every day. For the first time since 2003, I’m afraid I’ll die of AIDS. This time, it won’t be because I didn’t know I had HIV, or because I neglected to take care of myself. It’ll be because bigots lie to the American people, saying money spent on HIV prevention, education, and care is wasteful.
Before the advent of HIV medications, AIDS was rampant, causing so much hurt, sorrow, sickness, and death. Republicans seem to want to see that again. It reminds me of something conservatives and conservative Christians said during the ’80s and ’90s – that AIDS was killing all the right people. Queer people, drug users, Black people, Latino people, women, sex workers.
We know HIV isn’t choosy or selective, and that it’s transmitted regardless of race, gender, identity, financial status, or anything else. But old biases remain in the people in charge.
There’s a scene in the 1996 musical Rent that takes place in an AIDS support group. In the scene, group members individually share the same fears: “Will I lose my dignity? Will someone care? Will I wake tomorrow from this nightmare?”
That lyric punches me in the gut.
It feels a lot like the day the doctor told me my diagnosis. It feels like when the over-coiffed broadcaster on network news reported about proposed slashes to HIV education, prevention, and care funding.
Will I wake tomorrow from this nightmare?
Photo Credit: Moment/Getty Images
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