Being Health-Conscious Living with HIV

Summary

Being Health-Conscious Living with HIV explores resilience, mindful choices, and wellness at hiveaid.org—guiding toward healing, balance, and renewed strength.

Being Health Conscious. The best practices for anyone living with HIV and AIDS is to be health conscious. Being health conscious with HIV and AIDS means educating oneself about the virus. It involves pursuing a nutritious low-fat diet and proper exercise. It also includes taking the prescribed medications.

I am very slack on doing all of these, even though I am HIV positive. I have a lackadaisical attitude toward health. Additionally, I smoke cigarettes. Smoking is a huge no, no even without a detrimental health condition.

One reason I decided to be lax in taking my HIV medications is because these medications can cause erectile dysfunction. The psychological impact of being HIV positive has deeply affected me. This impact is far more significant than the effect of the HIV medications. I have an ever-constant awareness of my illness. This awareness creates a fear of the negative consequences it may have on an innocent woman.

In other words, my genitals have effectively been removed. My dream and wish for having a loving, caring relationship with a woman has been extinguished. This is due to the anxiety that I feel in being a carrier of this hideous virus. Thus, my diligence to be health conscious has been compromised. I felt that my life, at least a wholesome life, was brought to a disgraceful and deserving end. This feeling arose when I was diagnosed as being HIV positive.

Feeling like a sub-human because of being HIV positive may show a strong willingness to sit on the pity pot. It might also be like committing suicide by proxy. But what the hell, no one lives forever.

My cigarette habit is not only a health-conscious issue. It also makes me feel weak-minded. I feel like I have allowed myself to be controlled by a ragweed. I stop smoking every so often and then start blowing smoke again. The gruesome side of my cigarette habit is that I have been isolating myself. I have not had human contact for the past number of years. Cigarettes have become a murderous companion to ease the loneliness.

Just for today, I am clean and sober. I have been this way for twenty years since I stopped using crack cocaine. I am not saying that smoking cigarettes are a harder habit to break than drugs or alcohol. Yet, I was younger when I stopped using drugs. I saw some daylight ahead of me. I had not compounded my health problem with an avalanche of bad choices and decisions. These choices made me feel even more inadequate and stupid. They also made me less energized to pursue a vigorous health-conscious agenda.

I would strongly suggest anyone who has allowed themselves to start thinking as I have, cut it out now. Being HIV or AIDS positive is not the end of life but is only one of our lives many challenges that must be faced and successfully managed

I am now old and ugly. For me, the bridge has already fallen into the creek and sunk to the bottom. But, a young person who is HIV or AIDS positive should live their life to the fullest. They should work to find a cure for the HIV and AIDS virus. Or, I should say, they should make those who have the cure for the HIV and AIDS virus release it.

Being health conscious is not just for those who have an illness. It applies to everyone who wants to be as mentally and physically sound as possible. This is important during our fleeting time of terrestrial existence.

For a person who is HIV or AIDS positive being health conscious also means being health conscious of others. I do not recommend self-imposed isolation as a method of containment. Instead, I suggest being very thoughtful of others. Being considerate is a workable approach to containing the HIV and AIDS virus.

I have done and said things during my life that I feel are deserving of death. Being an animated cadaver is a fitting and just punishment for me. I detest being HIV positive. I abhor being a lethal weapon because of the blood that is coursing through my veins.

I hate that when I see a nice-looking woman my loathsome virus makes me speechless and immobile. I am ashamed of smoking cigarettes, which is why I do it as discretely as I can in public, but my clock has only a few more ticks left in it and if all goes well I will die before my murderous smoky companion kills me with a slow agonizing death.

Being health conscious is not just a good thing to do. It is a necessity if one desires to be mentally strong. It is also necessary to be physically strong and energetic. A person can allow themselves to feel depressed and quasi-hopeless. But, at the end of the day, the day concludes, and life is too fragile and fleeting. It’s too fleeting to waste any moment in anger and self-pity.