curious

[Ann]

if I were the offending type the slave reference could be touchy but...

Sorry, darker, absolutely no offence intended. I was letting my inner kinky hang out.

I agree with you when you say "it all seems scarier than it needs to be". If you read the blog entry I linked to above, you'd know that in the early days of my diagnosis I imagined all sorts of scary things that might happen if my status were known. None of them ever came to pass. It's the fear of the unknown. Sometimes our imaginations are our worst enemy.

Only you can decide what's right for you, but the majority of people I know who are out about their status have found it's a huge relief - and none of the fears they (we) had before being out ever amounted to anything.

[leatherman]

i hope the day when i feel "what the fuck, it's who I am" comes quickly.

why wait? LOL I had that attitude loooong before I found out I was poz.

When I came out in the 80s, I was taking a bold step in the southern US because of the religious prejudice against homosexuality. Many of my older gay friends (older by only 5 yrs or so) had actually gone through marriages of convenience to hide from the prying condemning eyes, and the nagging concerns of their families. I thought I was lucky for the times to have changed so much that I didn't have to marry and could just be "gay".

Sure there's been a bit of backlash (never underestimate the power of a redneck to be stupid LOL); but my motto is "if you're not paying my bills, then I don't give a shit what you think about my life. Pay my bills and THEN you can tell me how to live". So far no one has ever taken me up on that offer. (dang it! LOL)

So when I turned poz - and in the early 90s that was as good as saying you were already dead - I had nothing to lose by hiding the fact. I had already seen how people had hidden cancer in the 70s (whispering about it and calling it the "big C", etc) and how by the 80s, it was no longer a hidden disease. So although I don't run down the streets of America screaming that I'm a "pozzie queer", I see no reason to NOT tell people when the subjects comes up, that I'm attracted to men or that I'm infected with HIV and have been very sick with it in the past. I tell them just as if I would tell them if I had diabetes, cancer, ms, etc.

With my sort of "you-ain't-paying-my-bills-so-fuck-your-opinion" attitude about life, health and happiness, of course, I told all my family and friends when I found out I was positive. But like I said in 1992, that meant a lot more than it does today. Easily within the next year my partner grew very sick. Between all the trips to the doctors, and both of us dealing with thrush, wasting, AZT anemia etc, it would have been too hard to cover up the problem and not worth hiding the problem to the people that cared about and loved us.

Many people today remain in the closet, and so haven't learned the way disclosure can be liberating (but then all people aren't gay and many won't even have this chance for self-growth by bucking societal views, norms and prejudisms.) They are therefore, ill prepared for this kind of medical disclosure with stigma related to it. In a similar way as to how many people used to stay at home and quietly die from cancer too, many people stay quiet about their HIV and suffer in silence.

Sure there's been a bit of stigma from disclosing my status; but I had already come to terms with that by coming out. Until those ignorant people pony up the moola to pay my bills, I don't care if they are haters. Their prejudisms, stupidity and hatred will eventually be their undoing, so I'm happy to let karma deal with that type of person.

But when there's not stigma, telling can be liberating, and telling can be an educating experience. More often than my disclosure turning bad, I find disclosing (openly, honestly, not sheepishly, with a sense of backbone about you) often leads to an inquiring mind asking about the disease, the transmission, and the prevention. Every time I work at the health booth that my ASO sets up in schools, churches, and fairs, I find that, rather than pushing back against any hatred or stigma, my open attitude leads to helping spread knowledge and hopefully that knowledge (and the rubbers I pass out LOL) are leading to fewer cases of HIV infection.

[tommy246]

The bottom line is that everyones circumstances , lifestyle, community, friends, family , personal needs etc are so different there is no right or wrong here . I have told my wife and brother and will tell no one else i am perfectly happy with that.
Some people in the general community are still very niave about hiv and just dont understand it , how we live with it or how its passed on and are just scared of it .
I dont need to tell anyone my personal business on any level healthwise, financial etc , some people are just more private than others.