Can we just talk for a minute?

Rapid Results tests are made available at pharmacies…

I can’t quite decide how to feel about this particular bit of news.

On the one hand, I think that the more accessible and culturally competent, or at least de-stigmatized, we making HIV testing the better.  I know no small amount of people who refuse to go get tested because they don’t have a primary care physician, and are unwilling to go to a place “where people will think they have AIDS.”  I like the idea of offering to these folks, even a minor improvement in access, by allowing them to travel to a Walgreens or CVS nearby, just outside of their typical circles of coworkers/friends/family and pick up a test they can take at home.  Hopefully, maybe, possibly these folks will pick up the test and take it at home.  And if they get a positive result, hopefully, they will go see a Doctor to have further blood work done to confirm or negate the diagnosis. This is my hope for those folks who would not normally get tested otherwise.

My greater concern is for those who are already a bit nervous and scared. I have heard, as many of you know from other blogs I’ve written, the horror stories about friends and loved ones who tested positive and were given the results in a less than compassionate manner; attempting to walk in front of buses, going on a binge of alcohol and drug, typically cocaine or Meth, or trying to simply fuck the pain away, safely or not based on their level of frustration anger and depression. 

It is these folks that I worry about.  I wonder how I myself would react if I got a positive test result, and did so in my own bedroom one evening.  How would I react? Would the world be robbed immediately afterward of a bright young(ish) soul who had much more to contribute? 

This really brings back to mind a bigger problem.  When will we have fully addressed, socially the Stigma of HIV?  I maintain that if people around the world, and in the US, decided to collectively educate each other and themselves about being POZ that this would not be as big of an issue.  If we get a place in society where telling a partner, a friend a loved one “ I am HIV positive” wasn’t such a risk to take, a gamble emotionally, then we begin to address the larger problems of treatment and testing stigma.

This will not negate the need for serious reform and overhaul of funding situations and insurance coverage issues. But it is a beginning. 

Gay pride month is officially over, July has begun. With it comes the promise of afternoon showers in the Southwest, apparently thunderstorms that kill power in the northeast and floods in the southeast.  But I’m hoping that July of 2012 will begin something else. I’m hopeful that we can begin a series of conversations, where we discuss without families and friends what it means to be HIV positive in 2012.  The ways we have to protect ourselves if choose to engage in sero-discordant relationships. The things we should say, and things we should avoid when living with, or loving our Positive Brothers and Sisters.  When we begin these conversations, and open our minds to the information, we create space where people feel freer to discuss their status, positive or negative. And when that happens, we have less to worry about young people, vulnerable people, taking tests in their homes without company. And potentially ending prematurely a vibrant and exciting life left to be lived out.  As I say all the time, these are our Brothers and Sisters we are talking, its worth the time to start the conversation.