Origins Unkept

AIDS activized me in the late 80s.  A columnist in my town's newspaper wrote a commentary blaming AIDS on promiscuity, & less obviously, on gay men.  I wrote a letter to the editor rebutting it, believing it would not be published.  It was, & after a follow-up conversation with the owner/editor, I was invited to write an article about AIDS, its causes, & its toll on society.

My best friend wasn't interested in AIDS she said, so she didn't want to read the article.  She did, however, months later, want me to go with her for her HIV test results.  Negative.  The only time I ever got pissed at Gay Men's Health Crisis was when they ran:  Don't Take the Test.  It's Bad News. ads.  I still hate that(long-defunct) campaign.

I was a little surprised when the church secretary at my father's place of employ made a point of commenting on my letter to the editor so positively.  Years later, she & her husband, the deacon, raised their grandchildren after their daughter succumbed to AIDS.  She'd been exposed to it from a man she met at church.

When I first started reading blogs,  I blog-met two HIV+  bloggers, Nelishia & Mark, whom I grew to like & admire,

This post was going somewhere else entirely a few minutes ago.  The second word of the post keeps tapping me on the shoulder.  3 charities are in my will, but the force has seeped away.

Nothing activizes me anymore, & I'd not fully realized that until now.  I could write that I don't have the mental strength for it - which sometimes is true- but really I no longer have the heart or the proper sustainable mind-set for it.  

Each time I've read  My disability does not define me  I've pushed down envy.  Perhaps I have not yet learned the proper way to calculate mine, because it seems to permeate me.  I'm going to try to recalculate.

I wrote that a few days ago.  I'm in a slightly better place now.  I've been pushing myself -sometimes gently, sometimes not-- to do rather than to think about what I can no longer do.