The Survey
As he worked studiously on the survey questions, he reminisced on memories past, brought back to mind by the subject matter printed across his computer screen. The questions were intimate in nature, invasive even, but he did not mind. He had long ago accepted the fact that his addictions had cost him any dignity he may have possessed, and he had become unashamed of his past. Being more concerned with the possibility that someone, anyone might be able to benefit from his suffering. To learn from his struggles, and how he had managed to overcome them. If he could just manage to put some words to paper that might inspire people to make different choices for themselves, healthier, and happier choices. It did not matter to him whether he was around to know people had been helped, the mere knowledge that he had contributed something positive, and helpful to the world, for him was enough.
He had no desire for money or fame, though he had as a lad, his passions were always people centered. He did want to be the lead vocalist in a rock band, but his underlying motivation there also was to write and sing words which would add something worthwhile to people’s lives.
How many times had he sat in the dark, or with a single lit candle resting in a saucer on the floor next to the ashtray, while he contemplated taking his own life?
How many of those times had the words in some power ballad reached him in his place of hopelessness, and given him the courage to go on, even when it hurt so badly?
Maybe it was the frequencies generated by the melody of the chord progressions of the piece. Either way there is some synergistic effect produced by the interlacing of an impressively clever rhythm, a crunchy verse, a melodic chorus, and a powerfully poignant message superimposed over it all. There was no doubt it was extremely therapeutic. His motivations for this desire had never once been in any way monetary. He was obsessed with making a positive difference in the world. He was obsessed with making sure that his difficulties would serve the betterment of others.
He needed his suffering to mean something, to have been ‘for something’. If he could somehow manage to contribute some good to this cold, dark, ugly world, then ALL suffering would have been well worth it. That was all that mattered to him now.
Question 1. Does anyone know about your HIV?
In the final analysis, that was all this broken man had ever wanted. Just to help people. To be the reason that someone chose not to give up. All he had ever wanted was to make a difference, as cliched as it sounds. He had suffered horribly under his burdens; his soul was littered with scars. Wounds so deep they would never ever heal. He knew by now, that his pain would not be going away. Much to the contrary, with each passing day it seemed to grow exponentially worse. His only respite lay in his passions. His only solace manifested by his digging into the hardened blackness of his tortured soul and translating the horrors he found there onto paper.
Looking feverishly for the silver lining to his misery, as it were…
Question 2. Does your family know about your HIV?
He had only two goals at this point in his life, as he sat at the keyboard, gingerly scratching the greying stubble that jutted out of his chin from every angle. They were basic desires. He wanted to die. He wanted it so very badly. This was his second-most passionate desire. Sometimes he thought he wanted to end his misery most of all, but he always chased those ideas from his mind as soon as they came. Despite the increasing difficulty, he was adamant that he would not allow himself to ‘rest in peace’, until after he had accomplished whatever purpose his soul had incarnated into this place to achieve. This was his most important ambition. He would bitch and moan to anyone who would listen, but he never gave up. He had hated his life with such a passion for so long, but never once had he become willing to allow himself to go before it was “TIME”…
Question 3. Do you believe that most people who have HIV are rejected, once they are found out?
He had always believed he had come here for some grand purpose, confident that he was here for some significant, and meaningful reason. He had even entertained the possibility that he was the long-awaited messiah, albeit very briefly. Messiah, or not though, and no matter the cost, he would not allow himself to leave this planet before he had accomplished this unknown task. He had always been strong in his belief that he would know what it was when he saw it. But it never came, so he kept right on waiting, and believing that it would. His depression was agony, and it was persistent, often only letting up for a day or two, at a time before plunging him into even deeper pits of despair, and merciless melancholy.
Question 4. Do you believe that people think you are disgusting because you have HIV?
What drove this man to endure such misery? What was so important to this man that no amount of trauma or hurt was enough to break him? His dream coming into this life, was simple. He wanted to help people. He wanted to make sad people happy, and he wanted the angry to find peace, he wanted the sick to be healed, he wanted the resentful to forgive, and he wanted the offenders to make amends.
He just wanted all the fighting to stop.
You see in spite of how vile and repugnant humanity could be at times, and they often were. He somehow held onto the belief that humanity had so much potential for good, if only someone could show us the right ways. If only we could find our way. His friends had always mocked him for his optimism, for his obsession with saving humanity from ourselves. Calling him naïve, and grandiose, as they nagged him about cutting his hair and getting a job.
Question 5. Does having HIV make you feel like a bad person?
Some had even accused him of having a messiah complex. That one had caught his attention, and he pondered it for moments here and there. He never once actually believed he was anyone special, certainly not the son of any almighty God. The only thing he felt he brought to the table was an iron-clad stubbornness to never give in, no matter how hard it got. His buddies had to stop having wrestling matches with him, for fear of really hurting him. Even when locked hopelessly in an armbar or some similar limb lock, the man would not tap out. He had always been fully prepared to allow his body to be broken, but NEVER HIS WILL. He would NOT ADMIT DEFEAT, and he WOULD NOT SURRENDER.
He always wanted to though, and he often prayed for his life to come to an end. You see that pain of his never took a day off, and he dreamed of the day when it would just fade into the blackness of the night, and he would finally ‘not be depressed’...
Question 6. Have you lost friends due to revealing you HIV status?
All he had ever wanted was to make all wrongs right for everyone. He often told himself and used as his ever-present consolation that someone somewhere would be touched by his efforts, by his example. Someone would surely see all that he had been through, and maybe someone somewhere might be inspired by his perseverance, inspired to put the razor blade away and just have the bath, or to untie the hangman’s knot, and step down off the stool. He wanted to be the reason someone, somewhere chose not to give up on life. Which was ironic because as he worked his way down the list of questions he could not help but notice that he, himself, had given up on his own a long time ago. . .
Question 7. Does having HIV make you feel unclean?
The questions were for a survey about his health issues. He had several of them, but these too never bothered him. People’s reactions to his health never failed to tear him to pieces, but he never allowed the afflictions themselves, to slow him down or impact him in any way.
If only others could have been as openminded and accepting.
He had become infected years ago, but his immune system appeared to be just as stubborn as his spirit, and even without treatment, his CD4 cells were staying at a healthy level. The virus was increasing in parts per million, fortifying their battalions for the final grand assault which would inexorably result in his moving on to the next phase of life. For now, though, his immune system was holding firm.
As the questions began to drag on, he began to call to mind old memories. Memories of a better time, a time when no one had anything against him yet. A time when people did not recoil in terror, upon revelation of his health status. A time when he was still young, and carefree. Riding his BMX with the neighborhood kids, leading the pack, and smiling ear to ear as the summer evening sun warmed his face, and the breeze blew through his long, stringy hair which was sticking out from under his backwards baseball cap.
Question 8. Have you stopped socializing with people because of how they react once they find out you have HIV?
He moved on to memories of his first love, and how convinced he had been that they would be together for all eternity. How they had met outside Plamondon metro station in the Cote-Des-Neiges borough of Montreal. She was slightly disheveled from her shift at the bakery, and she had on her long blue coat with the black checkers on it. She possessed the most beautiful deep mocha brown eyes he had ever seen, surrounded by full long eyelashes. Her smile seemed to light up the whole street. It was just in his mind, but it also lit up the young man’s heart. Back when everything was still easy, back before he ‘cracked’ under the immense weight of his burdens.
Question 9. Do you have anyone to go out, and have fun with?
This memory led to one of his most painful memories. The day she told him it was over and meant it. He had deserved it. She had tolerated as many of his foolish choices, as she could stand, but he was out of control. He flashed back to the time he first tried ‘it’. The night he had sat through 2 straight hours of his best friend’s attempting to coax him into trying ‘it’. He had been steadfast in his refusal to try ‘it’. He looked at his friend, who was so skinny you could practically see his ribs through his ratty old T-shirt, he was wearing filthy jeans that seemed to be impregnated with the eyewatering stench of ripe foot, and bum. The jeans even had a huge rip in the crotch, but he was wearing underwear so technically they were just this side of the line that separates decency from indecency. He had no job, and no future. The man had astutely divined that this ‘thing’ he was trying so valiantly to get him to try, might very well be the reason for his deplorable state of hygiene, and indeed responsible for his dismally lackluster life. It had not been enough, however. In the end it had taken no longer than 2 hours to convince the man to try ‘it’, and from there it was a very long, drawn out, downward spiral.
Question 10. Do you feel you have to be very careful who you tell about your HIV?
It was a sweltering Montreal summer evening when she began by sitting him down on a curb behind the store next to her mother’s building, as she prepared to tear the bottom out of his world. As she searched for the kindest, and gentlest way to tell him it was over, he recorded her words, but his mind had also begun replaying that day in his brother’s apartment in very slow motion.
The day he had walked up the toilet bowl of his life, and looked down at himself, floundering in the water. Trying desperately to find some way to get a foothold on the slick porcelain, so he could push himself up to the lip of the bowl, to grab the handhold he so direly required. As the man stared down, he knew it was a terrible idea, but he felt as if he was powerless to stop himself from flushing the toilet.
That was the day he bought his very first quarter gram of cocaine, but definitely not his last. His brother had cooked it up in a glass tube. The kind you find in a laboratory. He used pure spring water, and just a scooch of cow brand baking soda.
Question 11. Do you have family or close friends who allow you to vent or constructively support and encourage you?
When he had finished preparing it, he began to coach the man in the various consumption methods. There were far more than he would have ever guessed. The man was growing impatient though, and so he cajoled his brother into shutting his Yip and passing the ‘Pip’. That afternoon, any future worth having was squashed, like a cigarette in the mashed potatoes. The man flicked his Bic, and he inhaled as deeply as he could. Following his brother’s instructions which he affectionately termed the ‘hyperventilation method’. And in that instant, the man’s eyes were opened to the knowledge of good and evil, and it was both terrifying, and exhilarating. Then ‘She’ walked into the room, and immediately looked at the scene, and knew just what had transpired. It wasn’t hard to figure out because just as she walked into the man’s brother’s bedroom door, she walked face first into a humongous cloud of the toxic vapor which the man’s lungs had just released.
Question 12. Have you ever been rejected by a romantic partner because you have HIV?
The man’s mind was racing, his heart was pounding like a stag on steroids, and instantly upon her entering the room, he was overcome with feelings of intense guilt and fear. He was convinced that she would dump him on the spot. She did not, but he somehow knew that “it”, would wind up being the end of that first love story somewhere down the road. He immediately began bombarding her with questions meant to discern whether she was upset or not. He was none too subtle, and she immediately saw what he was up to. She was half smiling, and half deadly serious, as she admonished him, warning him that he was playing with fire, but “if that was what he wanted to do, she was not mad”. She was disappointed certainly, and wary, if anything. In retrospect the man was certain, that in that moment she too had realized that somehow, this little white pebble, would one day be the cause of the end of their relationship.
A relationship against which the man would measure all of his other relationships for the rest of his life.
Question 12. Do you have a close friend or friends for emotional support?
As they sat there on the cement blocks, the man’s mind came back to the present in a hurry as she calmly, and detachedly told him that it was over, and that there was no going back. She told him about her new Beau, as he became certain that his whole life had just gone to pieces right in front of his eyes. It was as if the sky had just fallen on him, like a ton of bricks. He felt as if his intestines had just been cut right out of his belly, and were now lying on the asphalt, baking in the evening sun.
A huge part of him died that summer night, she would be his last attempt to develop an emotional attachment with anyone for many years to come. After she had said what she had to say, and he had exhausted every plea he could muster,
she walked silently back to her mother’s building without looking back. . .
He immediately began to think of ways to get some money and get High. There was no way he could go on, if he could not smoke away his pain. He could not have her, but as long as he could be high, he thought it would suck, but he would be OK.
He wasn’t though, not for a long, long time...
Question 13. Do you have anyone you can ask for a hug?
His mind came back to the present with question 13. This one drove it all home for him. How he had wasted all of the best years of his life chasing his own personal “Big White Coma”. A long drawn out suicide on the installment plan. Except he was not dead. He was very much alive. Having faced his demons head-on and lived to tell the tale. He allowed his thoughts to drift to all those he had himself known, who had not. There were so many, and those were just the ones he knew. He never liked to talk about them, and he didn’t like to spend a lot of time thinking about them either. When he did, he would start to wonder why them, and not he. That would mess him up for weeks, so although he thought of them often, he didn’t dwell on them more to say: “I miss you guys, I wish you were still here”, and then he would busy himself with some manual activity, so he wouldn’t get stuck in that train of thought.
Question 14. Have you been hurt by the way people have reacted to you having HIV?
The fact of the matter was, he always believed that the best way to honor the memory of those who didn’t make it, was to do the very best he could to make his life the very best that he was capable of. Reaching for the highest rung on the ladder of achievement that he could possibly reach, was for him, living their dreams out for them. His success, was also their success. He had always known that ghosts, and spirits are just as real as you and me, so he knew they were watching. He felt that even if they could no longer achieve their dreams, theirs would be fulfilled by the proxy of him fulfilling his own. Once souls leave this realm they do not feel emotions the same way we do. They don’t experience hate, jealousy, or any negative emotions really.* Not even regret at having lost their life. The man knew this only too well since he had been able to see them ever since he was a very young boy. So many others were happy to believe all they are told, and so they still believe that death is the end. They believe that they will either be going to a lake of fire somewhere underground, to suffer for all eternity, or to a cloud factory in the sky. The fact of the matter is our corporeal minds, are simply unable, for the most part, to fully comprehend what comes after. However, there is no place of eternal suffering in the next phase. All is love and light, and the man had long ago begun adopting this mantra into the very core of his being. It had not been hard, he had somehow managed to maintain the wide-eyed exuberance of his youth right into adulthood. Odd, considering how badly he had been treated as a child, and especially in the light of the life he had lived, the things he had witnessed. In spite of all the ugliness he had been forced to witness, he was always kind to strangers, always honest even when it hurt, and he was always eager to forgive even the most grievous offense providing the apology was heartfelt and sincere. So, in spite of all odds against him, despite his fears, and self-doubt, he steeled his gaze, and screamed at the sky; “The harder the battle, the stronger the warrior”, as he set off down a long dark, and lonely road.
That road led him straight to hell, but it also brought him back.
*There are exceptions to this, but not enough of them to be relevant to this story.
Question 15. Do you believe that you are not as good as other people because you have HIV?
It had brought the spirit of the boy on the BMX back. Smiling from ear to ear with the evening sun warming his face. In as much of a hurry as one could possibly be, to get to a place in his life where he would be in a position to use what he had learned in Hell, to help others. What he had learned from facing his demons, from facing the very worst parts of just who and what he was and had the potential to become. The good, the bad, and the utterly disgraceful. Staring at all of that ugliness within himself, he felt himself overcome with empathy for the little boy he felt hiding inside. The little boy who wanted more than anything to come out and live again. The boy as timid as could be, who always asked the same question. In a tired, meek voice, he would ask:
“Is it safe for me to come out yet?”
“Can I come out and live again?”
It had been a very long time before the man was able to listen to that question, much less answer it.
It had been a very long time before the man had been to even look upon the huddled mass of a boy sobbing with gut-wrenching tears, a child not understanding why he had been forced to hide away from everyone else. Not understanding why…
It was far past time, and the man was no longer a boy, and it was time to take responsibility for his own repair, and he had done the footwork to get here. He was finally ready as he mouthed the words,
“It is safe for you now”, silently reassuring the child.
Question 16. Do you believe that others who are aware of your HIV, will tell others?
He became extremely sad when he realized that his answers to the questions had painted an extremely bleak portrait of his life. None of the things a man his age was supposed to have, did the man have. No friends, no family, no job, no home, no future, but most definitely one hell of a past. His children either hated him, or didn’t know who he was, and their mothers would not even acknowledge him on the street if they were to cross paths. That ate at him each and every single day, but this too, he did not allow himself to dwell upon. All that mattered now, was braving the storm, and facing all of life’s challenges, on life’s terms, without using “it” ever again. Though no one ever believed him when he told them, that he had cleaned up his act. They believe it even less when he told them he did it on his own with no help, or support from anyone. The mere suggestion that he might use “it” again someday brought a smile to his face, and chuckle to his belly. They would caution him on being arrogant, and how pride always begets the fall. He had been prideful in the past, and he had indeed fallen. Multiple times, but this was different.
Taking pride in a job well done, is not the same as taking pride in victories, not yet won.
He was proud of how far he had come, but he did not take anything for granted anymore. He would forever swell with pride when he thought of all he had finally managed to overcome, but he never forgot that tomorrow was always another day. We only ever have today, and now as he answered the next question, he glanced to his right, at his window, and the noose that hung there. He glanced at it for a good long while before the tears began to well up. It had taken awhile, because they were coming from so very deep down within him. He recalled a few of the times, a few of the places, a few of the faces who had on so many occasions said to him or to someone about him, “You know that one’s not going to make it”.
He stood up as the tears streamed down his face, half smiling through his pain; he unhooked the noose and threw it out the window, before realizing what he had done. Hoping that it had not landed on the head of some unsuspecting evening jogger, and after a moment or two, he was satisfied that it had not.
As the man reached the end of the survey he replayed their words in his mind;
“You know that one’s not going to make it”.
But the fact of the matter was that he had survived the seemingly unsurvivable, and now it was time for him to start doing whatever he could to make this world a better place for everyone to call home…