Hello. My name is Brent and I am HIV positive. (Part 1)

After two years of trying not to entertain the idea of HIV/AIDS-related blogging (since writing is what I actually do for real and the fear that some people may recognize my style and choice of words), I finally gave in and started tweaking a few HTML codes two nights ago. Hence, you're reading my first blog post. Ü

I don't really know how to begin this with... but you know what alcoholics and drug addicts do on Anonymous meetings? That's right. So let me start with... "Hello. My name is Brent and I am HIV positive." Ü

I gotta admit, I'm probably one of those kids who have been served almost everything they needed on a silver platter. But having strict and conservative parents can, mostly, do more harm than good.

With tight-laced upbringing, I always have that need to be the best in everything I do to satisfy my parents expectations but - most often than not - ends up failing. Case in point: always been number one in my class on primary school BUT graduation day, which ironically happened again came high school. Ergo, my parents were so mad they didn't attend the graduation ceremony. Then the rest is history.

Fast forward to my pre-diagnosis, I fell in love.

Mature and true love.
I was 19. He was 28.
I was top. He was bottom.
We've always had good times.
We were both happy.

Oh love, love!
It was hard and deep that it felt like falling in love was a good idea (or so I thought).

Until the lies and the cheating glides in. Love struck deeper and painful that it hurts. But when you're blinded, you end up falling off the cliff and down: Splat. Broken.

I won't go into details anymore ('coz he and his friends might be reading this) but to cut it short, it didn't end up really well. I tried moving on but days turned into months then came years, I still love him after everything he did me wrong.

Got a good job. Clubs. Sex. Drugs. Got promoted. More drugs. Passion turned into stress. Work's slowly turning into a hell full of work loads and responsibilities. Drugs-Work-Clubs were the only relationships I had.  

I got caught up with all the abuse, I got sick. I was rushed in Makati Medical Center for weeks at a time, even more than once in a week. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.

One of my doctors recommended an Infectious Disease specialists.
Her name is Dr. M. She's really nice and funny.

She asked a few lifestyle-related questions which included my sex life:

Male to male sex? Yes. Oral sex? Oh yes.
Anal sex? Hell yeah! Wears condom? Totally.

Then her last words were the ones I feared the most: "DID YOUR LAST HIV TEST TURNED NEGATIVE?"


To be continued...