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A permanent feature
| Last updated: 22.05.06 |
Depression has become a more or less permanent feature of my life with HIV. I used to get depressed before my HIV diagnosis - at times I’ve wondered if the main reason I ended up contracting HIV was because I’d been spent so much of my adolescence and young adulthood depressed.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know about HIV - I could have written a small book on the subject - but I just didn’t have the emotional nounce and assertiveness to put that knowledge into practice.
My first experience of depression was when I was 17. I was revising for my ‘A’ levels at the time and I put down the feeling of hopelessness that enveloped me that early spring to worry about exams. Well, I’m sure that concern about getting the grades to get a place at university was making me anxious, but there was something else causing my contributing to my growing sense of despair and hopelessness. I knew I was gay, and, sorry if this isn’t PC, I didn’t like it.
It wasn’t a good time to realise you were gay. AIDS was just starting to become a big news story and was being called the ‘gay plague’ by the tabloids. The then Conservative government was in the process of passing Section 28, banning local councils from ‘promoting’ homosexuality, the chief constable of the Greater Manchester Police, in whose jurisdiction I lived, had said that gay men only had themselves to blame for AIDS, his ‘direct line’ to God telling him that gay men were ‘wallowing in filth of their own making.’
For years I’d been called a ‘poof’ or ‘queer’ by other kids at school because I was crap at football and looking back on it I know that I was different. I did my best to keep my head down and not to attract too much attention, but it didn’t make much difference and I gradually came to dislike myself for being who I was. The school I went to was quite religious and although I can’t really remember the teachers there saying anything about gays or homosexuality, it was made very clear that any sex outside marriage was sinful. I can remember praying every night, asking God to stop making me fancy the boy who sat next to me. It didn’t work. I then used to ask myself, ‘why me?’
My Mum and Dad were very loving, but they used to make constant remarks about actors like Dirk Bogart being ‘queer’ and I didn’t feel I could turn to them for support. Nor could I tell any of my friends - jokes about puffs made that clear.
I got through my bout of depression, sailed through my ‘A’ levels and secured my place at university in London. I made a small number of friends in my first year, but didn’t tell any of them that I was gay. I tried to ignore it myself and worked really hard, and just drank myself into oblivion whenever it became something I thought about - I lost count of the times I got so drunk I couldn’t remember what I’d done the night before.
Finally, I realised I had to do something about it and told a female friend I was gay. She encouraged me to go to a gay bar in King’s Cross. Well, after walking past it several times I finally plucked up the courage to go in. It was really exciting, full of happy people having fun. Lots of the men were very sexy. But none of them seemed interested in me. I got very drunk.
A sort of pattern emerged. I didn’t feel that I belonged in the straight world, nor did I really feel I belonged on the gay scene either. This was mainly because I just didn’t feel desirable. I focused on my every fault. Everybody seemed to be having so much fun, except me.
Well, I kept on drinking, and when I wasn’t drinking I was in the library. This carried on for a few years. I got a good degree, and a well paid job. But was desperately unhappy. I don’t think I knew what it would take to make me happy. I’d made a few gay friends, but my connection to them seemed very superficial. There was no way I could tell them that I didn’t actually like being gay.
My life just seemed rubbish, and I’d regularly slip into black moods. My sleep would become worse, I’d get irritable, feel sorry for myself, say things like ’I hate my self’ whilst looking in the mirror - or even whilst walking down the street when I remembered something that distressed me. I can remember asking myself if there was any point to life, and the answer was ‘no.’ Thoughts of killing myself started to enter my mind. I really remember walking along the Embankment and thinking how easy it would be just to jump in the river.
And then things would brighten. Life wouldn’t seem so bad after all. It was in one of these bright moments that I met my first boyfriend, Jed, at the cheese counter at my local super market. We hit it off. He made me feel really good about myself. He gave me HIV. I don’t blame him at all. He didn’t have a clue he had it. I can remember that I really didn’t want to have unsafe sex but just didn’t know how to say no, I couldn’t stand up for myself.
Actually, my mood didn’t immediately get worse when I found out I had HIV. If anything, it lightened. I just sort of gave up caring. I packed in my job and went on benefits. Things were alright for a year or so. But then I started to notice a predictable pattern in my mood occurring. I started to feel bad about the way I looked and for being who I was, telling myself that I’d ruined my life and was a terrible failure. Just look at the evidence - I couldn’t even stop myself getting HIV. Jed and I had split up and I was going out a lot. But nobody seemed interest and I drink was the only real companion I had on nights out. Gradually I started slipping into cycles of depression. The intervals between the depressions got shorter and the episodes of depression started to last longer and become more intense.
Eventually I asked for some help from my doctor. He put me on Prozac and sent me to see a head doctor. I’ve been on Prozac ever since.
I have got on with my life. I’ve got a job, I’m doing okay on HIV medication. But most of the time I’m really unhappy. Sometimes I have thoughts that really make me ashamed. I’m probably not allowed to say things like this - but I sort of wish that HIV treatment had never come along, I’d probably be dead my now and all my worries would be over. But then, my mood brightens again, and yes, I am glad to be alive and still have years of life left.
Trouble is, I don’t have a clue what to do with them. I feel so alone. Who’d want to be with somebody with HIV? I was never an oil painting to start with and that’s got worse since I got side-effects from my HIV drugs.
Life is a struggle - I’m trying to sort out why I have such bad feelings about myself - I tell myself that it’s because I grew up in such an antigay environment and always felt like an outsider. But I don’t really believe that - I just feel like a freak a lot of the time and that I don’t deserve love or acceptance. At times like that it seems quite fitting that I have HIV.
But the fact that I do struggle does mean something. It means that I’m not prepared to put up with the rubbish. That I really do, deep down, believe that I deserve better. If I start loving myself, then perhaps somebody will love me, HIV and all. I think that’s a good place to stop writing.