Bang, Bang...

Thursday is coming up fast again. I’m not nervous. A bit excited actually.

I know I should be sleepless, panicky and paranoid by now. But hey, it’s just a CD4 count. Worrying about it won’t help. As the song says, Que sera sera, Whatever will be, will be.

There’s just really no way of guessing how good or how bad it’s going to be. At this point I do acknowledge that my paranoia can get its way sometimes, linking every pain, every rash, every pimple, and everything else with HIV. So unless I’m really bedridden or hospitalized for something, I have no reason to think my CD4 count will be alarmingly low.

On the other hand, I can’t confidently say that we caught the bug in its early stages. I can only guess when exactly I got infected and by whom. Which is why I notice myself scouting for some familiar faces at the H4 when I’m there. I don’t know exactly how I’ll react, but it might be along the lines of So did you catch it from me? Or did I from you?

I now realize that my sex life has been a huge game of Russian roulette. The only difference is that the gun was always pointed my way, and I didn’t know exactly how many bullets there were. And still, I would usually take the risk of not wearing the bulletproof vest. So eventually and expectedly, I got hit.

I don’t know if that classifies me as really brave or really stupid. But I always thought that each was a requisite for the other. But it was all my choice. I guess it was all in my personality to live life for the day, like I had nothing to lose and have no regrets. Extremely noble… if only I lived in my own world, independent and void of outside connections. But that’s too much to ask.

Everything creates ripples. Everything is connected. We live in a world ruled by laws which state stuff like Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, No man is an island, Energy can not be created nor destroyed, and Birds of a feather flock together. I won’t go as far as saying Misery loves company. I would never wish this upon anyone else.

So now, though the gun is still going around, I’m trying hard to handle my bullet responsibly. Bang, bang…