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Page 7
Jako
August 22, 1995
But, I have great hope. I really look at myself as somebody who is going to live for a long time and I plan on it. Even if my body starts becoming ill, my will is going to keep me alive. But I do know that there is something inside me and it is a real control issue. In order to function you have to change your thinking. You have to start thinking well, I can't control this but maybe I can slow it down. It might be fucking my body over at some level but I'm going to try to fuck it as much as I can. All that negativity you have at first changes because you have to survive. You can't continue living without denying it in a way. Not denying it, but denying some of the things you are scared of.
If by chance I don't have a future, I'll have to deal with that not occurring.
I want to have a long life with Nicholas. Being with him is magical and
something that I don't think that I can replace with anyone else ever again.
I would love to get married to him at some point. I would love to adopt
a child with him as my partner. I would like to buy a house and make this
big crazy weird artist's house that I'm really proud of and work on it
with Nicholas because he is also very creative. Sometimes thinking about
the chance of these things not happening can be really really sad to me.
I just can't think about that all the time. I'm trying really hard to do
the living for now thing. Just live every day to the damn fullest and fill
everyday with as much peace as I can.
Living for now kind of backfires in a way because I try to do so much everyday. When I objectively look at how much I've been doing for the last two and a half years in the way of activism it's overwhelming. Public speaking, article writing, letter writing, advocacy for HIV, plus going to school. I just finished my foundation year of art school. I spend as much time as I can with Nicolas and my friends occasionally. If there is one problem with my life it's that I need to slow down. I always feel that time is running out. I really am not at the point where I can just forget about the future and the possibility of not having it. I'm not completely at peace with my mortality. It's really hard to have HIV on top of all the family issues I have to deal with. I have a lot of bad patterns I have to replace in myself that were ingrained there by a horrible father and a horrible, violent childhood. It's hard to say a horrible violent childhood. I remember some good things. I remember some really funny things but the majority of it was destructive and painful and the therapy I do now has far more to do with changing the self that is a result of abuse than the self that is a result of an HIV diagnosis. I feel like I dealt with one big hurricane and I got out of that hurricane and survived it. I had such a load of things to deal with in the first place, why do I have to have this on top of it? I feel overwhelmed. If I deal with it all right now I will probably be out of commission for a couple of months at least, I don't know, maybe longer. I just need to deal with it a little bit at a time in my therapist's office or with my boyfriend, when I feel safe, or with friends when I feel safe. I just can't let every day be HIV and former abuse. This past winter, almost nightly I had a nightmare about my father killing me and my sisters and my mother. I would have nightmares about the devil killing my sisters and I. Running away from my father, him catching me always and killing me and then I would wake up.
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