overcoming HIV depression

A Sober's Guide to Overcoming HIV Depression

Foreword: No proven effect but it's worth the try. Last time I was in PGH, there's a form asked for me to be filled out. It's a correlation between depression and HIV. And if results show that I am depressed, the kind student said that I could be referred to a psychiatrist for proper consultation and guidance. So I answer the test and voila, not depressed. Below are the things that I thought would be nice to share for those newly-diagnosed PLHIVs. These are exclusively from my experience so I am sure some things won't apply to you. But you consider, maybe it's bound to help one way or another.


1. If you suspect that you are at risk of contracting HIV, get yourself tested. Running away from HIV test--and in the long run from your status--won't make you feel any better. If it gets down to it, not taking a test in spite of perceived risk on your part will only make matters worse. You will feel good by not knowing your status (out of fear) only for a moment, but when the systemic symptoms are already showing, it's gonna be tough.

2. Get help. I will have a solid stand on this: Family-first policy. I know that we have different domestic setup and that some HIV positive gay men are still in the closet but if you can, get help from your family. If you think your family just won't understand you, reach out to your close friends. To whom you will get help and support is a judgment call.

3. Do not seclude yourself. It's not entirely about having HIV. It's about knowing you have HIV. And when you know you have the virus, it sets a trainwreck of depressive thoughts in your head. The more you seclude yourself, the more the devil is playing with your idle mind. Go out there and find distraction.

4. Pay your Philhealth account. Every HIV positive here in the Philippines knows how important Philhealth remittance is. If you're voluntarily paying for your contributions, better. Because at least you are keeping tab of it. If your employer are always late in remitting your contributions, make sure that your local treatment hub knows about it so you can prove that you are not remiss with your obligations, but your employer is. This is to let them know that the remittance of your premium contribution is not within your hands anymore.

5. Share your experience. It need not have to be with a company. Much better if you can volunteer, but if you don't, keep a blog, a social media account or an open line for pieces of advice. For all we know, a newly-diagnosed HIV patient who is depressed and lost may be out there. Keeping a journal of your transformation and coping mechanism will help them. Do it for them.

6. Pray. In deference to apatheists, this one is entirely personal and subjective. Then again, go there and renew your sense of faith. The bitter part of acquiring HIV, especially in the Philippine context where male-to-male sex is the most viable transmission, is that it seems to be looked upon as a maleficent karma on our promiscuity or lack of sexual restraint. Renewing your faith, as I can attest, will dampen the stigma associated with the condition. In times of moral danger, sometimes the best hope is to cling to the Man Upstairs. If you know deep inside you're sorry and willing to change, no amount of stinging remark will ever get you.

7. Drink your ARVs as soon as possible. When I was diagnosed back in 2011 my CD4 count was well above the 200-mark. My doctor gave me an option, which means that I can defer drinking my ARVs. But I asked for her honest-to-goodness opinion and she recommended to discount the figure and push on with the ARVs. I did. Now, I am back within the healthy range.

8. Be fit in all sense and aspect of your life: physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Go hit the gym. Help other people. Do away with stressors. Hush a prayer. Sleep long. It's not necessary for you to go on a Juju cleanse or a six-pack abs. Just make sure that in common human experience, you are functioning well. Don't just settle with "Yes, I'm okay." Make it, "I feel damn alive."

9. Instead of asking why, ask how. Finding out you have HIV won't turn the movement of tides. It's already there. As defeating as it sounds, asking why won't do anything good. Why prompts us to look for answer. Sure we can ask that but it is dangerous to be fixated to looking for answers that won't come a day after, a week, a month or years. Our having HIV will make sense when we have already change our inner core. How do we change our inner core? How do we stop from poisoning our thoughts with hopelessness? Simple, ask How? How can I move on? How can I move past the situation? By asking how, we look for solutions more proximate than the answers that would fill our whys. How elicits action. Why hopes for a distant answer. Action to how is more at our disposal than answers to why. At a time when we are at the most vulnerable, ask yourself, "How can I rise up from here?"

10. Forgive yourself. You have a special circumstance as to why you contracted the disease. Maybe you've had unprotected sex. Maybe due to syringe sharing. And all sorts of reasons attendant to it as well: apathy to condom use, lack of knowledge about HIV, misinformation about transmission, or simple carelessness. Whatever those are, it's good for you to look back and admit it to yourself that you erred, that you've had a lapse of judgment, and you know you could have done better. You can only do so much running away from your mistakes. Time will come, it will catch up on you. It will be better if once in a while, you admit that you made a mistake. Forgive yourself first because in so doing, you befriend your past. Your mistakes will not haunt but actually will guide you in arriving at a wiser and more mature decision when the situation presents itself again: "I will use condom always. I'll be very picky with my sexual encounters, if not keep my sexual encounters to a low. I will make a conscious effort by not infecting others." When you forgive yourself, you're bound to be kinder and more gentler with other people. And it will make you want to preserve those who are not yet infected. Forgive yourself, because it's the only way to carry the burden of your past and make them light.

They say that the toughest battle belong to the strongest soldier. If any, we should look at HIV as a chance to pull ourselves together and redefine our lives. HIV is human immunodeficiency syndrome. Right. But I'd rather make a more positive note out of it. HIV: Here Is Victory.

giving back

A life-changing event will happen this June and it will necessitate me from sinking into the depths of oblivion. In this vein, I could not promise to at least monthly update this blog (though I do hope I still can). I have had been once out of the radar here, so repeating it would be easy.

Then again, to those people who are losing hope, especially the newly-diagnosed who stumbled upon this blog, or anyone wanting to have a sort of lifehack on how to go about with this condition, I am opening up my email to take the stead of my would-be moribund blog life. Right there beneath Dr. Freud's quote is everything you need to know.

I hope in the littlest of my way, I can share what I have experienced and am still going through in this second lease of life, a phase that started three years ago. I cannot personally volunteer for and involve myself in a support group because I am menacingly shy in person. So, I will allow you to drop a message and hopefully I can respond within arm's reach.

And if I can give one really, really important advice to the non-positive and still healthy individuals out there, especially to Filipino gay men: Please, if you can't discipline yourself--where I have failed in-- don't be sexually involved with just about any other guy in Planet Romeo or just about any other gay dating sites. This isn't a smear campaign against the website, because, agree or not, this blog won't change anything in there.

I know that there is Abraham Maslow to defend your need for sex, but rusty as the adage is, the person who so deserves your naked body should see first the nudity of your soul. Stay away if your dickhead and your brain are switching places, with the former lording over your entirety.

No matter how unpopular my decision, I will tooth and nail recommended against social networking sites because despite the Department of Health being one-too-careful in admitting that these seedy sites is "just one" of the vectors of increasing HIV numbers, I could say that it is the biggest factor why men are having the opportunity to have sex with men. I could just look back to some three years ago, my stupidity coupled with raging hormones, and my gay, reckless and wanton need for carnal desire to defend my case.

Beyoncé may have dodged the bullet better than I did, but it is in this picking up of a fractured soul and the healing of wound I can certainly give back.

hospital buddy

The homily of the priest reminded me of the boyfriend.

It's been more than half a year since H.S. and I got together. I've known him from three years back since the day I admitted to him that I like him (What gall have I, no? Lol.) and I never thought that the second time is sweeter.

He knows I am HIV positive. I disclosed my status. He needed no less than transparency and I owe him full disclosure of the events past. He accepted me and my 206-pound baggage, and until now I never thought that someone so amazing like him could see past through me and share this magnetic relationship so resplendent and beauteous.

I usually don't write about my happiness (hence the long hiatus) because you know how sometimes diabolical and diabetical love could be and I want to spare you from all that. But I come to write about it now because there's this one "mysterious" thoughtfulness that he always do to me.

I've been in and out of PGH-Sagip for the last I'm-too-lazy-to-count years to the point that I have already had three medical fellows graduated and a bunch of nurses known. Short to speak, I can go to Sagip alone because it has become a routine. Even if that means only getting my refills, updating Philhealth documents, which takes no longer than 20 minutes. I can even manage a routine check-up on my own.

That changed since we became a couple. He would always make it a point that he will join me in Sagip regardless of my agenda and regardless of how much time we will spend there.

So it came that the former solo wait became a pair. Though we would talk under whispers or him going over his phone and I with my book while waiting, the scene has changed: I am not alone anymore.

For the many times he was with me in PGH, he could have just stayed at home, gone home to rest after a day's work or minded his own affairs, but the pigheaded in him wants to join me in PGH.

"I want to be always there because the hospital is a scary place and I don't want you to be alone." That he would always tell me whenever I'd ask him why the needed company.

Believe me, it is heartwarming, but I too would not want to be the demanding partner. H knows that I will understand him and find it okay if he will just stay at home.

I left his answer like that for the longest time until a while ago. Thursday. The novena of St. Jude was on and the priest gave a moving homily.

Linguistically-speaking, the priest tells that the Pangasinenses (the priest being one) say "help" as a noun just like the Tagalogs do, which is "tulong." But the verb form is different. Pardon me but I forgot the exact word. I think it's imaanan ta ka or imanaan ta ka? I cannot recall anymore.

The point being is, the dialect provides a more fraternal meaning in the verb "to help" to the Pangasinenses. He said that in their dialect, the verb "to help" also means "to accompany." So if one would say "I will help you," it's pretty much like saying that "I will accompany you." Hence, the dialect reflects that to help (tulungan) means to accompany (samahan) the one who needed help.

The homily reminded me of the boyfriend and his vague (at least for me) answer to my question. I never knew that the answer lies in a different tongue. That he is helping and accompanying me at the same time.

I left the the district of San Miguel, Manila in a reflective state, smiling bashfully knowing that my question has been answered twice: by the boyfriend and by the heavens. And in that drop of a subtle answer from the heavens, my case is closed. The hospital buddy is here to stay for too long a time.

HIV and employment

To anyone here in the Philippines, I just want to know what's out there.

Have you heard of or witnessed any incident of employment regarding HIV condition? Among others, but not limited to:

a.) denial of work promotion due to his/her condition
b.) enforced work demotion due to his/her condition
c.) denial of medical procedure and/or hospital admission by an insurance company in line with HIV-related medication
d.) mandatory HIV testing for pre-employment
e.) continuous non-remittance of the employer of Philhealth contributions (this is pretty much a perennial problem)

Or perhaps, your experience not necessarily listed above that concerned your condition with your present employment.

Names are not needed to be divulged.

after three quarters

Salut!

Not that I don't want to update this, but I am resolved to post entries here sporadically. And during the intermission, I forgot what email I use to log in Blogger. Hence, the seemingly interminable silence.

I really don't know why I still bothered to have this blog kept alive. Perhaps because I want to make a quick detour when an HIV-related thought pops out of my head (yes, I mean to keep the topic that way) or to comment on other blogs here and there (which I don't believe myself since I'm not privy to other people's rundowns anymore). Eitherway, it's not necessarily to document my life as often as possible. I've learned to keep my thoughts tucked under the folds of my diaphragm or to purposefully select ears who will afford me undivided attention. I'm not pay-moose for the whole of unknown names and faces to know every bit of my drab of a life.

So to you, my still-interested readers, may you find a reason to go back here despite my next post may be already in eons to come.

Adieu.

messages from the deep

Weeks back, I woke to a strange dream. Well, not necessarily. I roused from sleep since my bladder commanded me to flush out its content. All that I had transported to the real world was the dream.

It’s debatable. Anyone drinking efavirenz will surely recognize that vivid dreams run rampant as it is a side effect. But does efavirenz direct the dreams we manufacture in the dead of the night? I beg to differ. This dream isn't that vivid as well. It carries though metaphysical symbols that I know I have to unravel to take the meaning out of its sugarcoated layer.

I’m lying in bed in a dark, bluish room. (As in the nature of dreams, scenes could be very outlandish.) The room isn't painted blue. We've all experienced those fiery red sunsets once in a while, right? Right. It’s like that. But, the rays of the sun falling on the room are blue and a heavy curtain seems to block off much of the sunlight, that it’s both dark and bluish.

I’m in the bed but I’m wide awake. To my right, I see my hand maneuvering and arranging old, worn-out, dilapidated toys, whose paint has already peeled off due to age. I'm sitting them beside each other as one would do when he’s done playing his toys. The scene kept on repeating: the same toys, the same set, but the toys become more and more brand new as one repetition rewinds and plays again.

Then, the john called. I wanted to write down on a sheet of paper “toys” to remind myself about it but I was still groggy. Then again, the scene is so striking I knew I could recall it again even if the Sandman is still dragging me back to his lair.

I took to Google what it could be and it returned a result, and I quote:

To see or play with broken toys in your dream suggest that you are trying to make the best out of a negative situation.  (Source: www.dreammoods.com)

What luck! I never thought that my subconscious could point me to definitive point of my life. For starters, living with HIV isn't something that's all fancy. But I guess, with the droppings of heaven, divine interventions, and untiring prayers lifted to Padre Pio, I guess I'm being told to push on and turn the tables in my favor in spite of this—let’s give it to them as they won't understand us—damned life.

Moons back, I dreamt of someone cutting my hair. Again, I relied on Google (what authority!) to shed light on the otherwise metaphorical message. I quote once more:

If you dream your hair is being cut by someone else it is likely you are only now formulating what it is you need to do, what actions need to be taken, and you are still in the process of coming to terms with the change that needs to be made. (Source: www.allvoices.com)

I'll be stingy with details. For now, the waiting is yet to be over, but the light is coming in no matter how heavy the curtain is.

joseon's son

Sweat trickles across
your forehead
and the map at your back
reached the borders
of your sinewy column.

One step, two paces,
gray shirt, Sir.
Your powdery scent wafts.
Your eyeglasses—
Inebriating stranger.


To the Korean guy inside the gym who is physically alluring in 5-3-6-4-7 metered lines. I've had this on draft since January, I think, a month before I stopped gym. There is a bigger, more purposeful road ahead. Poetry will not be abandoned though; he's my lifelong inamorato, the third of the ménage à trois.