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All the Ways You Changed Me 

Paul Nwoye

There are many things a HIV diagnosis does to you. First, it makes you pay morbid and obsessive attention to your body. You begin to examine every part more critically and extensively, the way a first-time mother examines her newborn with prying eyes. When you step into the bathroom, the moment your clothes are off, you stare long and hard at your frame in the mirror. You gaze at your collar bones and wonder if they were always this visible or if the virus had eaten so deep at your being that your bones are starting to jut out to ask for help.

Next, you check your weight more often, and every gram you lose triggers a wave of panic attacks and anxiety. Will people notice the weight loss? Will they know you have HIV by merely looking at you? Whatever happened to HIV not ‘showing on the face’? When a boil grows out on your foreskin, you believe AIDS has come for you. When you cough three times in a row, you immediately  fear that tuberculosis has just moved into your lungs on a Lamborghini. God forbid you wake up tired or feeling fatigued with a headache and a body that seems unable to do anything at all. It is certain that is the day Mr. AIDS will take your life. It doesn’t matter that your viral load is down or that your CD4 cells have increased, paranoia will remain with you. It will seep into your moments of happiness and sour it or exacerbate your anxieties and make you feel dead while you are still breathing. And even when you try not to think too much about HIV, there is always someone -a pastor, a motivational speaker or just an ignorant fellow who will use your condition as a punchline to inspire others – Thank god for your life; you are not sick with cancer or HIV.   HIV changes you a lot. And I know this because this is my fifth year of fighting this scourge. My life has changed in ways I never imagined. This is my story or, at least, fragments of it.