Trying to Live

I now have to try to live, to treat today as the first day of my new life living with HIV.

But how I hate that phrase, 'living with HIV'
Right now, for both of us, to live with it seems an impossibility .
And totally undesirable.

This is not because we do not understand that people do and can live quite a few years with HIV with medication. We can and have read the information, listened to everything everyone has had to say and tried to take it in..

And we know it is thought that some may reach a 'normal' lifespan i.e 70 to 80 years perhaps - others of course will not, seems to be just random luck.

But for us having got to our 50s without something like HIV we simply lack the desire, energy or willingness to live with HIV or want too. I think if we had got this our 30s or 40s our attitude would have been quite different. But thank god we did not for Caja's sake as had we, she would have probably been born to a mother with HIV - and so she may have had more chance of having it to.

But we just lack the will to want to 'bother' somehow with what living and trying to stay healthy and alive with HIV will entail and the constant fear that your health could break down as well has having to be on medication which will have side effects.

All just too much bother!
Quite honestly, both of us would rather die than live with it and die quite soon.

But neither of us want to die ill, so we have seriously talked about joint suicide once we have sorted out our affairs for Caja.

This is so different from how I have ever felt before, and certainly Barry.
Barry has always had robust mental health.
But I have gone through many things in my life including emotional and mental ill health.
Yet the one thing I have never truly been is suicidal.
Things have felt desperate as I am sure they have for everyone now and then, but I love life and always have too much of a sense that if you can just get through your latest challenge, something else better will be around the corner.

And of course for Barry suicide is as alien to him as joining the police force would be - he just would not even consider it under any circumstances - except this one.

The suicide option was/is not a cry for help or even considered on any emotional basis.
It seriously seemed a very practical thing to do and one that would solve the situation for both of us.

But of course the one thing that makes it not a good solution, is our daughter.
And I am only writing about this here because we have decided that this is a way out we can not take, because of our daughter.

If we had decided to do it we would not ever have mentioned it to anyone - you would never have heard about it.

But we have decided against it - and whatever the outcome of Caja's HIV test as she deserves as much life as she can get, and with support.

We have had a lot of our life, so it would not be a big loss to lose the last 20 or so years we had left - lets face it we are both in our mid 50s, the average lifespan is 80 in the UK, so this really was the last phrase of our life anyway

But it would not be fair for Caja and we have a responsibility to her to live as long as we can and support her for as long as we can and in anyway that she wants us too.

Even if she is HIV negative, she is an innocent victim of Barrys actions and even mine in a way. Because I knew he went to sea and where he worked and that there was always a possibility and I also knew that he would not tell me if he did.

So should really have insisted on regular trips to the GU clinic when he came home and not had sex with him until we knew he was OK.