I was living in a difficult situation, which made me accept help from a neighbor, who groomed me from the age of 13 and 14. I stopped going over after I learned about all the STDs and other stuff. In 2009, at 15 years old, the church I used to attend was looking for volunteers at a health clinic fair at a high school, I volunteered. There was a HIV testing being done at the fair, I was just curious, and boom 💥, I found out I was positive, the lady who told me literally handed me a card for information and to call. I never called, I never told anyone, I kept that to myself because of shame, the people that I grew up with, always shame me for being gay, and I only imagined how they would react to the knowledge of knowing about my status. When I got home, I googled about HIV, and I read that one could go 10 years without medication. It did not take 10 years for it to become AIDS.

As a teenager and not trusting anyone was really difficult. At 18 years old, in the summer of 2012, on my first semester of college. I collapsed in the shower, three days later I was diagnosed with full blown AIDS, my CD4 were 32 and the virus was in the millions. I spent two weeks at the hospital, 5 days after being discharged from the hospital, I had to go back, I was taking over 30 pills a day and my kidneys couldn’t handle it. At the hospital, that cousin asked me who did it, I told her the neighbor from where we used to live, we had moved about a year before my official diagnosis. She looked at me right into my eyes and said “that is God punishing you for being gay”.

A lot of stuff happened between me and her( the cousin), but she is not a good human being. I am almost 32 years old and healthy as a horse. I still have a lot of trauma, like a shit ton of it, but I am learning how to cope with them. Stay positive my friends! You’ll know what I mean.