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Page 7
Anya
August 22, 1995
Anya's Apartment, Sunset District, San Francisco
MW: Do you feel differently about yourself today than before you tested positive?
Anya: Before I found out I was going to therapy, I was in a really good place in my life. Since I found out, I've been forced to think about things that you don't normally think about at twenty-four. You don't have to think about what people are going to say at your memorial. You don't wonder about what you may look like if you get sick, who you might have to say good-bye to, or things that you may never experience if you die before they can happen, a child, a certain career, or graduate school. People walk around thinking that they're going to make it to eighty, they joke about growing old or retiring, but that is all gone for me. There's always room for miracles, but it wiped away the denial of my mortality and the feeling that I have a future. I've started to see things in more vivid color and appreciate them more than I ever did before. I do things now that I might have put off, because I don't know if I will have the opportunity again.
HIV threw me into my natural passions. I am really interested in the connection
between mind and body, and now my whole life is about that. I'm like a walking
experiment in my efforts to stay healthy. The view that you get from the media
about HIV and AIDS is really fatalistic. There's a lot of propaganda out there
that leads people to assume when you get HIV you will get AIDS and die. It's
hard for doctors to be supportive of someone who doesn't buy into that because
I think they have. They read the statistics and see it everyday... A lot of
people do die of HIV, but I think a lot of people die from suggestion. The
assumption is that you are going to die, and people worry themselves into
sickness. There's not a lot of support out there for people who believe that
they can live with this. There are people who have had HIV for years, 15 years
even, who are still healthy. Hopefully, in the future, there will be more
people as an example.
» This completes 1995. Continue reading 2000
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