Hidden Entries: From a vantage point of an AIDS/HIV positive’s torn pages

Written by Mary Antonette Dadis

“Dear Diary,

It’s World AIDS Day, supposedly a day to raise awareness, and to bring support to people like me who suffers with it. However, all I could think of is, should I still prolong the agony? It started when I began to feel recurring symptoms of flu. As I run my palm through my bare skin and all I could trace are red, angry rashes… My stomach hurts, *cough* perhaps love was not the one to blame, but myself, for being vulnerable and for giving away my trust like a flyer. Every inch of my body, is affected from that one blunder. Feeling like I am made of domino chain… Everything collapses one-by-one, until there is nothing left in me. 

I thought “skin-to-skin” meant love, I should have listened as to how my brain argued with my heart. I had no idea I would never live normally again. Silence was not a form of strength and resilience, but letting my guard up on allowing the virus to attack my body, my cells one by one. Silence was opening my doors for suffering, more and more suffering.

Upon knowing how Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) which will turn into Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) if left untreated… I suddenly could not move, that is my case. Asking for help was holding a loaded gun on my head, all I could do is take it. When voicing out, feels like a crime. All I am is an image of a good girl, the golden child, the hope of my parents, the one who will make them proud, an embodiment of medals, awards, and achievements. But as I break, and my sharp and ugly pieces are on the floor, no one will pick it up.

Back then, I did not know what I was doing, all I know is that I want to feel loved. I should have noticed that the flags were red before I held it high in the air. But in this journey, I am not alone. There are people like me, in my area, in the Philippines, and all across the globe. And that, gave me a little bit glimmer of hope. 

It is not a joke, how some of us could live not having any idea that a virus lives within us. Silently causing damage unseen by the naked eye. I have never had an idea I suffer from HIV, over the past few years I was mainly asymptomatic. But the damage is done, even when the damage is invisible.

Even when sometimes, I could barely make my way up the stairs, I get tired easily, and my loss for appetite would make my stomach rumble but my mouth puke. All I could wish for is a kinder community, where people like me, were not perceived as “dirty”, “filthy”, “ungodly”, these marks of stigma etched on the back of my throat. Better believe me when I say, I have embarked these words in me, more than anyone else had.

Mistakes happen, sometimes it gets forgotten, forgiven, but sometimes it will haunt us each and every second of our lives. For now, it is just me and the twenty-thousand new cases reported in 2024. But it could be you. It could be anyone else. I guess, it is my day after all. It is World AIDS Day.”