I do this because...
Mar. 15th, 2003 01:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
geminigirlI mentioned in a comment to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ruralrob that I'd explain why I do the work that I do sometime. And he's not the first person to ask about it. But I'm primarily writing this post to put in the memories so that when people want to know, it's there for them to read.
Once upon a time, I was sixteen. Once upon a time, I was a high school student in a town called Setauket. It's a nice place...an hour and a half or two hours from New York City. University town-good schools, good place to raise kids. And that's where I lived. And that's where I grew.
My mother (and this is in fact relevent here) has said a few things about how I was growing up, which stick with me, even now. She's talked about how independent I have always been. She's talked about how sensitive I am. And she's talked about how I've always hated injustice...even before I was old enough to know the word injustice. My Dad talks about having a sense of Tikkun Olam...repairing the world. I believe that my ultimate responsibilities in life are to live as a good person-a mensch, and to leave a positive impact on the world. How I do it is insignificant...just as long as I do.
And so, I was a sixteen year old high school student. And I was confused, and angry. And sometimes sullen. But I've had an activist fire in me for years. I did a lot of stuff with hunger and homelessness growing up. I was active in Amnesty International. I was discovering myself-exploring sexuality, feminism, identity, and finding my place in my community.
Every winter, my high school held "Youth Awareness Week" in February. My high school began at tenth grade, and my sophomore year, one of my classmates committed suicide shortly after the end of Youth Awareness Week. But the next year, my junior year, it was held again. And through this program, I met my friend Craig. Craig was the first HIV+ person I met. To this day, I haven't been able to figure out what a gay, African-American man who is nearly ten years older than I am said that changed my life, that grabbed me so hard that I had to do something. But whatever he said, I haven't been the same since. I got involved in peer education...educating other teens about HIV. (I'm always amazed at how much things have changed in the years I've been doing this.) I was a peer educator in college. As a grad student, I interned in student health, where I trained and supervised peer educators. Even when I haven't been directly doing HIV work, I've been doing related work. It's just a part of me. I can't imagine not doing it. I can't imagine walking away from it, even when I'm on the edge of burn out, I find some other way to integrate this into my life.
I remember as a kid, reading the mainstream news magazines about HIV, remember not being scared of it, because I was too busy trying to figure out what the sex parts meant. Too busy trying to figure out that oral sex didn't mean french kissing, and that one didn't need a condom for french kissing.
There's not a good explanation for why HIV is important to me. When it first became important to me I was identifying as a heterosexual, white teenager, in a place where HIV wasn't a huge scary thing...it was something that happened elsewhere, to other people who I wasn't. But if you think about those old movies with variety shows in them-the ones where they use the giant shepherd's crook to yank bad performers off stage...that's what this feels like. Like I was grabbed with one of them, and pulled in.
This is just who I am. I don't know why. I don't care why. I just do it because I'm called to it...because I can't let go of it, even when I try-I just come back.
And the truth is, I've learned that I don't want to. Because it feels right.
One of my greatest wishes is to not have to do this anymore. To be able to walk away from it, because it will all be over. But until that's possible, I have to do my part.
ruralrob that I'd explain why I do the work that I do sometime. And he's not the first person to ask about it. But I'm primarily writing this post to put in the memories so that when people want to know, it's there for them to read. Once upon a time, I was sixteen. Once upon a time, I was a high school student in a town called Setauket. It's a nice place...an hour and a half or two hours from New York City. University town-good schools, good place to raise kids. And that's where I lived. And that's where I grew.
My mother (and this is in fact relevent here) has said a few things about how I was growing up, which stick with me, even now. She's talked about how independent I have always been. She's talked about how sensitive I am. And she's talked about how I've always hated injustice...even before I was old enough to know the word injustice. My Dad talks about having a sense of Tikkun Olam...repairing the world. I believe that my ultimate responsibilities in life are to live as a good person-a mensch, and to leave a positive impact on the world. How I do it is insignificant...just as long as I do.
And so, I was a sixteen year old high school student. And I was confused, and angry. And sometimes sullen. But I've had an activist fire in me for years. I did a lot of stuff with hunger and homelessness growing up. I was active in Amnesty International. I was discovering myself-exploring sexuality, feminism, identity, and finding my place in my community.
Every winter, my high school held "Youth Awareness Week" in February. My high school began at tenth grade, and my sophomore year, one of my classmates committed suicide shortly after the end of Youth Awareness Week. But the next year, my junior year, it was held again. And through this program, I met my friend Craig. Craig was the first HIV+ person I met. To this day, I haven't been able to figure out what a gay, African-American man who is nearly ten years older than I am said that changed my life, that grabbed me so hard that I had to do something. But whatever he said, I haven't been the same since. I got involved in peer education...educating other teens about HIV. (I'm always amazed at how much things have changed in the years I've been doing this.) I was a peer educator in college. As a grad student, I interned in student health, where I trained and supervised peer educators. Even when I haven't been directly doing HIV work, I've been doing related work. It's just a part of me. I can't imagine not doing it. I can't imagine walking away from it, even when I'm on the edge of burn out, I find some other way to integrate this into my life.
I remember as a kid, reading the mainstream news magazines about HIV, remember not being scared of it, because I was too busy trying to figure out what the sex parts meant. Too busy trying to figure out that oral sex didn't mean french kissing, and that one didn't need a condom for french kissing.
There's not a good explanation for why HIV is important to me. When it first became important to me I was identifying as a heterosexual, white teenager, in a place where HIV wasn't a huge scary thing...it was something that happened elsewhere, to other people who I wasn't. But if you think about those old movies with variety shows in them-the ones where they use the giant shepherd's crook to yank bad performers off stage...that's what this feels like. Like I was grabbed with one of them, and pulled in.
This is just who I am. I don't know why. I don't care why. I just do it because I'm called to it...because I can't let go of it, even when I try-I just come back.
And the truth is, I've learned that I don't want to. Because it feels right.
One of my greatest wishes is to not have to do this anymore. To be able to walk away from it, because it will all be over. But until that's possible, I have to do my part.
Dan Bern says...
Date: 2003-03-15 07:12 am (UTC)The day they found a cure for AIDS
Everybody took one little pill and was okay
The day they found a cure
The day they found a cure for AIDS
Everybody took one little pill and was okay
I slept with Cindy and Martha and Sue
i slept with Julie, Melissa and Kate
The day they found a cure
The day they found a cure for AIDS
Everybody took one little pill and was okay
The people who had plotted to get rid of all the gays
Admitted their guilt and then everything was fine
Everybody else said "I didn't know"
The day they found a cure
For six months
Noone went to work
They all had orgies
Morning after pills
Were sold in grocery stores
And gas stations
The day they found a cure for AIDS
Everybody took one little pill and was okay
We rented dirty movies
And ordered out for food
For three solid weeks
Everyone I met was nude
I slept with Julie, Melissa and Jake
Nobody was afraid
The day they found a cure
The day they found a cure
The day they found a cure for AIDS
(Dan Bern "A Cure for AIDS")
The truth is, I've thought about what I'd do...because I hope upon hope that it will happen in my lifetime. I'm not sure. I do other work...lots of stuff with women's helth issues, glbt health stuff...I've got an unfinished pile of research on access to campus based health care for lgbt college students which would be really nice to get through. I'm sure I'd find something to do, but I'd probably feel lost for a while.
The thing is, somehow, in it's own dark way, HIV has colored much of my existence-major news story when I was a pre-teen, certainly my entire sex life has taken place in the context of HIV. I've talked before about how I'm envious in some ways of people who had the pre-HIV experience, but at the same time, I'm glad I never had to go through a behavior change, a paradigm shift it you will about my own behavior-it's always been that way. I'd like to be rid of it, but I don't know if I know how to live without it.
Re: Dan Bern says...
Date: 2003-03-15 09:56 am (UTC)I know exactly what you mean, but this has been a rollercoaster ride anyway - i.e. people (like me) were going to die; no, there's a cure now;, no, its not a cure after all, etc, etc. Somehow we've managed to adapt, despite the odds. So I think we could do OK in a life without AIDS.
And as for what happens afterwards, there's a nice scene at the end of the movie Longtime Companion where everybody meets up - those who made it and those who didn't - and talks about old times, and hugs and stuff. Ain't gonna happen quite like that, but its a cute scene anyway.
Re: Dan Bern says...
Date: 2003-03-15 10:43 am (UTC)I haven't watched Longtime Companion in ages...that was a nice ending. Unfortunatly, it won't be quite like that here, but I can't imagine what it would be like. If you think about it, it might be a similar paradigm shift for people like me, who've experienced all of their sex lives with HIV around. Then again...there would still be herpes, and HPV and hepatitis and everything else that comes with sex.
I want simplicity...I want to not have to worry about anything but getting pregnant...that's easy to prevent. The other things I worry about more.