Chapter 13 – Guilt
I was originally going to write this chapter as a 6 month
review of where I was after diagnosis but that time has come and gone. It was a
point where I thought I had beaten the depression I was suffering after being
told I was HIV positive but I now know, at 9 months that I’m not there yet. I
also intended on writing a post on a more interesting and (for me) a more fun
topic, drugs, but that will have to wait.
I had my first session with my clinical psychologist
yesterday, he gets paid a lot of money to say very little. I talked for an
hour, he talked for 2 minutes but some truths came out that I now have to face.
I don’t know exactly how he expects me to deal with these issues but I think if
I record them I may be able to let them go when I hit the POST button so here
goes.
I was at the World Aids Day candle light vigil last week. It
is a ceremony that I hold dearer than Christmas. It is a time that I remember those
guys who I have lost, men who taught me so much before they were taken away by
AIDS. Taken when still young and full of life, never given a chance to really savor
the life they could have had. I burn a candle for them each year and think that
by keeping their memory alive, at least with me then their deaths were not in vain.
This year I also burnt that candle for me, an attempt to extinguish the control
HIV has taken of my life. Symbolic, yes, but important as a way for me to move
forward, or so I thought…..
I sat at a ceremony in Brisbane where the MC was too young
to have any memory of the horror we faced on a daily basis during the 80’s and
90’s, yet there he stood conducting a ceremony that he barely understood. Beside
me sat two young guys eating rice crackers while the ceremony took place and I
thought, “How lucky you are to live in a time when you don’t have to face the terror
that we had to endure day after day”. I remember
a time when I would walk into a gay bar to catch up with friends and the first
thing you would notice was a group at the end of the bar quietly having a
drink. They would have just arrived from a funeral service for a friend lost,
someone who had to rely on the friends who had stuck around to organise a
funeral because the family didn’t want to claim their son. It was such a
regular occurrence that it was barely worth noticing by the mid-nineties. I
would look around the group to see if I recognized anyone, just in case I knew
the friend they had lost. We grew strong together in the face of so much death,
so much loss, so much rejection and hate. We supported each other as a
community to try and survive the constant onslaught of grief and despair. We
partied hard, played harder, anything in an attempt to forget, even if only for
a moment, the destruction that was going on around us.
It was during this time that I became involved with many of
the guys that I celebrate each year during the candle light vigil. I was never
a hero, others can take that accolade, and many more deserve it, but I did step
forward to offer help where I could. My first loss was Roy, I’ve spoken of him
and his partner Stuart before, the image of Roy in those last moments will
never leave me. He was my mentor into gay culture, he passed onto me an
understanding of what it was to be gay and proud in a culture that had turned
its back on us hoping we would all get infected and die. He was strong to the
end. Never losing his joy or his love of life. When I was asked by Stuart to be
a pall bearer I was both honored and distraught. Roy was part of the leather
community and although many have a different impression of this culture they
were always loyal, supportive and at the forefront in fighting for the dignity and
respect for the fallen. So there I am at the front of Roy’s coffin surrounded
by men in leather trying to do Roy proud in carrying him to his rest. He was
surrounded by family, although no one present shared the same blood, there was
a complete absence of any biological family. This was not surprising or unusual
nor was it necessary because the chapel was full, full of people who accepted
Roy for who he was, people who did not care that he had died because a virus
had destroyed him, people who did not care that he loved Stuart and had made a
life with him until the end, in fact they were proud of him for all those
reasons. After the ceremony we became ‘that group’ at the end of the bar that I
had seen too often, drinking and remembering times spent in happier days. Days
when death and fear were not foremost in our minds. Roy died peacefully at
home, with his two dogs lying quietly beside him on the bed and his lover by
his side. Painlessly due to the morphine but needlessly, undeservedly and at a
time when politicians were publically stating that we deserved what we got
because of the lifestyle we chose. Is it any wonder I felt anger.
Roy was my first loss but he was in no way my last. Some I
can’t name because we lived at a time when we were desperate and no help was at
hand. A time when we were left to support each other without any sign of relief
or hope. I am not ashamed to admit that I was scared during this period, I was
in my mid-twenties. I was fucking anything that moved, a double take was enough
for me to get it on with anyone, anywhere. But so much of the sex we had back
then was frantic and fraught with danger. There was a need to show that we were
still alive among so much death. A need to proclaim our place in the world
because the signs were all around us that it could all change in an instance. I’ve
sat beside guys who were sick, knowing that help was not going to come, I’ve
said my farewells, lent over and embraced them with all my might before moving
pills within arm’s reach because they were too sick to get out of bed, so that
they could self-administer medications. Knowing that it would be the last time
I would see them in this world. Having to walk away and leave the house so that
I couldn’t be implicated in anything they chose to do after I had left. How do
I live with those decision? I had seen the path these guys were on, I knew the
long drawn out suffering they were heading towards. Doctors couldn’t offer a
solution, the government wasn’t racing to our aid, the wider community hadn’t
taken 2 steps back they had run to make sure there was distance between us
while they watched us suffer alone. We had to make awful decisions, decisions
that were all we had left at the time but that now haunt me and that I need to
deal with if I am going to get on with my life.
I have been diagnosed at a time when HIV is no longer a
death sentence, with treatment the virus can be controlled so it is now classified
as a chronic condition. Guys that I meet and talk to who did not live through
those plague years seem to handle this new situation better than I am. Many of
the younger guys I meet or talk to appear to take this diagnosis in their
stride and I didn’t understand why I was having such internal turmoil coming to
grips with it myself.
The first thing I did when I was given my diagnosis was plan
my funeral, I started giving away my possessions because I knew they would no
longer be needed by me. I contacted funeral homes to discuss options, I started
looking into my financial situation to plan for the end. I know I don’t need to
do any of those things but there is an emotion that has driven me into this
frame of mind and I need to release it somehow.
Guilt, guilt that I will survive this virus, guilt that I
will survive knowing those who didn’t, guilt for the actions I have taken in
allowing others to end their lives in the only way they felt they had control
over, guilt for actions and decisions I have taken that I shouldn’t have had to
make but now have to live with. Guilt, guilt, guilt.
When I burn that candle every year I burn it in memory of
those I lost, I burn it to ask forgiveness for still being alive. I know that
sounds strange but if you have read any of the proceeding pages then it is
surely obvious that I have always been promiscuous and hungry for sex. The mere
fact that I escaped the 90’s without becoming positive while being surrounded by
the turmoil that was going on is quite simply miraculous. By the time I left
Sydney I was burnt out, not by the city, not by the gay community but by the
fight for justice, too many funerals, too many groups of men in bars drinking
farewell, too many messages of hate, by the need to pronounce my right to be
who I was, the need to openly announce to the greater community that I was
here, I was queer and I wasn’t going to die to keep them happy.
So now I realise that old ghosts have risen. I know that Roy
and Stuart, Alex and Thomas and all the others don’t hate me for living. They live
through my memory of them but the guilt I feel for surviving when they have
gone is real, it is strong and it is holding me back. My therapist tells me
that I need to separate their journey from mine but how do I do that. Our
stories are so intertwined into who I am, where I have come from. They have
shaped my thought, my ideals my very being that I fear that separating them
will somehow take away something precious within me.
My therapist calls this homework, I call it a nightmare. He
calls it survivors’ guilt and post-traumatic stress, I call it the life I have
had to lead, the decisions I have had to make, and the memories I need to keep.
Because I realised on Saturday night while that young couple ate rice crackers
and listened to the speakers that they were attending a gay event because it
was, a gay event. I am the last generation left that can remember why this
event exists first hand. I’m not ready for the holocaust that I witnessed to be
forgotten, for the deaths to become names in a book, for my memories to fade
into the past.
But…
I somehow have to let go of something in order for me to
move forward. I’ve met someone who may be part of that journey, I hope, but I
fear that this baggage I carry may be holding me back. He is old enough to
understand, but too young to have experienced what I am going through right
now. He flies out tomorrow to spend Christmas with family in England and doesn’t
return until the 6th Jan. That gives me a month to try and work out how
to forgive myself for surviving while those around me didn’t, how to forgive
myself for the choices I’ve made in helping other make choices about how their
stories ended, to forgive myself for being in this situation at all.
I know I have to, that’s why I’ve sought out help but I have
no idea how I’m going to do this. Maybe I should have talked about drugs: that
at least I would have enjoyed.
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