conquered past?

Just how much would you want yourself to be? Would you run the risk of doing something good and great, but shelling out your serostatus to the world (and when I say "world" I mean the public at large and not just the PLHIV world)? Or would you rather keep out of the HIV radar and be complacent about your life?

The ambitious marginalia on the papers lying on the drawing table finally make sense. Should I continue to follow through, hopefully I'd be gearing up by 2014. The thing is, I don't think if my plan is a great idea since it's not going to be an easy one. It's not going to be a walk in the park or sunshiny days with the bees and butterflies.

And should things turn for the better, I don't even know if handling this life with HIV will be for the best. I know I am thinking ahead of the situation and grappling with the most pessimistic possibility my mind could ever conjure.

If situation will call for it, I may just actually throw my pithy middle finger in the air, tell them that I'm HIV positive and for all the crap they want to give, they can send it through freight in glittering gift wrap down the garbage hill.

I've been discussing this with my brother and he told me a nugget of wisdom—that sometimes, you have to let go of the greatest thing that scares you to liberate yourself from the pain which you thought you've already conquered.

Which makes me think, how did Magic Johnson reveal himself? And just why didn't Freddie Mercury do it early on in his life? Where do we draw the line between liberation and privacy? Is it an issue of personal atonement or self-preservation? What will we miss and what will we sacrifice?

I've been medicating myself with those peachy photo quotes flooding one's Facebook's news feed. You know, those prettily fonted quotes with an ethereal splash of pastel colors, saying that "you got to go through the worst to be the best" or "never let your past hinder where your future leads" or "the road to self-actualization has never been paved without worry." In a sense, they help.

But talk is cheap though. Things are easier said than done.

I've digressed too much. What is clear though is that, along the road of being a human, of existence, of living and hopefully trying to make a difference, just how much one could give and sacrifice?

And the stakes are even higher for a person with HIV. What will you protect: your dreams and the possibility of helping others, never mind if they know that you have the condition? Or your privacy and the skeleton inside your closet and the lost chance to be someone of difference?

Just how much will you aspire for?