Dear You

July 21, 2018

Dear You

You came to me today, you smiled, and gave me gifts and told me sweet things, and while we laid in bed and watched a show before we left for food. You paused it, your face crumpled down to sadness as you started to tell me that there was something that you needed to tell me. I felt my chest tighten, thinking that you were going to leave me, but instead it was something even worse. Something that I never expected you to say to me, something that I never wanted you to say. You tried to reach for me, but I stand up and I look at you before falling to the ground, the covers of my bed smell like Gain, I hated it. It smelled like sunshine and happiness, and I cried into that happiness, I felt the dread, and then anger came.

It was a swelling of boiling anger that washed over me as I picked myself up from the ground, screaming at you. I said horrible things to you, made you feel small and defeated as I slammed my hands onto the doors. I knew myself, I knew that I was reverting to a person that I used to be, not to a person that I was right now. I begged for you to tell me that this was nothing but a sick joke that you were playing on me. I asked if you wanted to be with someone else and you shook your head no. Your silence was killing me, it was hurting me, and tearing me apart inside of me. You were taking something away from you, did you know that when you uttered those three little letters? Did you understand that you were going to hurt me so badly when you said it?

All I wanted that day was to see you, to laugh and eat with you, and yet, I stood there staring at you in complete horror for what you have caused inside of me. When my voice calmed and my body stopped shaking, I slid to the bed and sat there as you whispered an "I'm sorry." I wanted to laugh and tell you to leave, but what else could I do? What was meant to be done? You merely sat there and tried to speak to me, but the numbness had set in, the sound of your voice drowned by my own thoughts. How did I allow this to happen? Such disgust in myself settles inside of me as I shrug your hand away. It was easy for happiness to disappear and for darkness to take hold of me that day. It was easy to hate you, even if you didn't deserve that hate. But, what more could I do but hate? You say it, you telling me that you had this horrible thing, something that could destroy me completely.

I can't believe it.

I couldn't believe it.

How could you?

You have HIV.

How?

The question screams at me, begs for me to answer it, but even I don't know how to answer something like this. I felt my body pull away from you again, I felt everything that I had with you being destroyed by the simple fact that three little letters were able to do such a thing. You took something away from me, you grabbed it and smashed it against the floor. Even I don't know what it was, maybe my soul, my heart? It was something so precious and now its gone like smoke blowing in the wind. What do I do now? How can I look at you? How are you still here sitting in my bed?

I feel something else, no, I hear something else, in my mind way back in the dark and dusty corners telling me something so horrible. Do you know what that voice says?

"You don't have it."

I hate that voice right now, I hate myself, I hate you.

So, what do I do now?

Please, tell me.