Yes.
This is a question I often get asked, either as directly, just like that or veiled in some “is it attention seeking” dig. I’d like to answer as best I am able to at 3:20AM on a Monday morning when time is but a fiction (hypomanic is so fun! No…).
I’ll say it upfront that the dig is also mostly right. It is attention seeking. It is me needing an audience. It is me. Classic me.
[I am not going to interject my own post with a compendium of stupid constructs]
OK, so now that I’ve said it, I need an audience and I need the attention, I’d like to get on with saying those are also the very things that keep me writing too. Like duh, dumb ass. It’s a self-perpetuating machine that will continue to perplex people enough to ask this question even if I answer it…
It may come as surprise to many readers but I never ‘plan’ a post here. They usually morph from a fledgling irritation or, in this case, a question I haven’t got answers for. I say this only because I need to be clear that there is no conspired “plan to manipulate” or “feed off” attention. And also that I never answer the questions either and usually forget what the question was. I said that I think.
Audience vs Attention
Is it really looking for attention if you don’t plan how to get it, when you need it? That seems dumb and an inefficient means to something very similar, but different: needing an audience.
I’m not going to get into it but without the audience I am nothing but a lump of lard, useless to me and useless to the world.
An audience is what defines pretty much every opinion, value or norm I have. The collaborative (read irritating) experience working though the ideas, feedback and thorough research others do gives me material to sort through and ultimately have a thought. That is a fairly good reason to get up in the morning. Right? To think.
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Anyway. I need to focus. Sorry for the ramble. Only sorry to the people that didn’t feel that needed an apology though.
Perpetual Secrets
Sharing my positive HIV status on Facebook one morning was possibly the best thing I have ever done while manic. Perhaps it speaks to my personality but I honestly think that if one harbors so much pain alone they can’t possibly be a reliable or useful resource for humanity.
The keeping of secrets, the lies, the avoidance of truths all end in pain with multiple exit wounds and multiple victims. I’ve been the cause of massacres. Doing those things nearly killed me, and I suspect others, certainly emotionally I’ve killed parts of people. We have all killed a bit though…
I could not live a secret a day longer. I was living with secrets pumping through my veins killing me. HIV was waiting in the wings to kill me. I was going to die alone. Alone because I don’t believe people can know you on a level that would matter enough to care if they were there when you die if you’re inauthentic.
So, I needed to out. The exhausting charade of ‘being OK’ was over. I was not OK. And I also wanted people to know that I was not OK, I needed help, didn’t know how to ask for it or who would be good to ask and that if I could I would not die alone. Also, that no one like me needs to die alone either. Or die of HIV actually. And that I was done hurting. If they aren’t a 3AM facebook status poster then they could tell me, And that’s enough to certify a fellow not-alone-deather.
I told everyone because I felt I had no one. No one should have to go through where I was if I something could be done about it.
We all die alone.
And what did publicly posting my status teach me? A lesson we all learn over and over again: you are no more special than the rest. And that we all die alone. Sad. It’s not the dying that matters though.
The brutality of that honestly has consequences though… but the liberation of being so vulnerable makes life worth living.
Vulnerability like I feel I’ve been doing is the thing that makes us all human. Vulnerable. From every feeling, thought, judgement, pain, accident we all share vulnerability. And that vulnerability is the resilience we have as a species.
When we share vulnerability with someone it allows for self-discovery, growth, acceptance of fallibility. The very foundation of what makes that expected “OK” is being OK with ourselves. And I cannot see a way one could grow and “be OK” being so consumed by their own fallibility. Also to not be shunned by the “are you enough” dicks (i.e. all of humanity). And not caring if the dicks do or don’t. Come or don’t. Idgaf. I’m here, vulnerable. Warts and all.
If working to feel you’re enough is selfish (as implied by some who’ve asked the question); then so must not doing so be a waste of gods gift to earth and all that. And a meaningless, pointless existence feeding of the rest of us asking why people do anything at all in life but suffer alone.
I’ll take selfish any day of the week. I’ll be so selfish eventually others will want to be selfish too. And we’ll die, content, enough, with an audience cheering a shared life of enough.
Let me gather myself…
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I made some honey-bush tea and finished a Mandala. That scattered end of part two and one I’m leaving on this post, if only to prove a later point I intend to make about authenticity. It’s OK if it doesn’t make much sense to you. It’s very esoteric reasoning. I’ll leave it there.
Speaking Truth for Others
So, that was the first experience with sharing my HIV status with the world. I felt all warm and fuzzy. I wasn’t dying etc. etc. What I did not expect though was the incredible responses I had to the post. One or two people said “shucks about the hivvy” sure, but a whack of my FB friends wrote me to say how much my post resonated with them, that they could read about dealing with a chronic illness diagnosis from an ACTUAL person. Honestly. And with his whole heart.
I hadn’t imagined that response. I honestly felt that alone at the time that I may as well have been the only person in the world with HIV – it consumed every other aspect of my life, including that there might be other sick people in the world.
Messages with a this sentiment poured into my inbox. Some from people with HIV sure. I was definitely not ready for the folks with secret prostate cancer, lupus, fibrositis, MS, autism and others. All saying the same thing: that my post made them feel less alone or inspired (which I am taking to mean inspired to take selfcare).
If you’ve been the alone I’m talking about here, you’ll take someone else’s pain as I reflected in that and use it to keep walking for as long as the sensation of a shared experience lasts – that’ll be far enough also.
HIV was not something I felt comfortable continuing to engage, advocate and just be somethings for someone though. HIV is a complex beast. When there are capable people, doing incredible work and have done for years, or have found passion for this cause then it would be irresponsible for me to muddy the water. I’ll leave this for a post on its own.
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The Blame Game
So, I likely contracted HIV while on a manic cycle. The connection between both “conditions” was born.
I have to catch myself often not to blame one for causing the other. These conversations in your head are a menace. It’s stigmatizing yourself. And it’s also pointless. Who gives a fuck. I’m here now. Deal. Right? Be vulnerable enough to have the courage to march on. Leaving a legacy like an online history archive for future generations to gawk at the archaic attitude of people who ask me this question.
This blog appeared about a month after my diagnosis with Bipolar. I did not hesitate to share and wear this on my sleeve now. I’ve noting to hide. Never again will I send myself to purgatory being inauthentic to the world. So this blog starts at the very beginning. It starts there because when I needed to know I was not alone there were no authentic resources that I identified with. And I so needed to not be alone.
I began writing for the internet then I guess. I really didn’t want to land at that answer… but I did start writing thinking I could change the world by sharing my incredible insights with the world. I might not change the world, but I hope I’ll change someones world.
For the next person who walks out of the doctors rooms and googles “people with hiv/bipolar/whatever real stories” my blog may appear. And if they’re brave and read my blog they will find I have been nothing but raw, honest, authentic (see part one, two) and… I’ve been vulnerable to an anonymous audience. And I will not stop being all those.
Please visitor if you landed on this blog you have found something rare in the world and something I lacked in my own life pre BP diagnosis,: unadulterated honesty.
If one person read any of my posts, the topic is meaningless, I hope it is enough. I hope that my unfiltered raw feels make the blog credible. And I hope that “real stories” are the authenticity anyone diagnosed with Bipolar deserves.
I hope that the 4 seconds they stay on the post before running is enough for them to know this: they are not alone.
You are never alone.
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So thats is why it started I guess. I refuse to let this question go answered. That was the primary reason though – help. It certainly wasn’t the only reason though. I’m not a lump of lard it turns out and obviously saw the value doing this would have for me too. I have so much more to say, but would you believe it I need to lie down. My back…. more questions to come.
