prayed daily and shared my turmoil and fears with my sister and my two closest friends. These three gave me the strength to take the test, if only to put my mind to rest. After all, how could I be positive? I had had very few sexual encounters in sobriety and before sobriety. I have never used IV drugs. I have been sober for five years. I had not been with my ex-boyfriend for three whole years.
In 1986, I took the test. I waited a week for the results. “Turning it over” took quite an effort, but I continued to ask my Higher Power for help. The diagnosis was “HIV positive.” I can’t describe to you the despair and hopelessness I felt at the time. I thought my Higher Power had deserted me. I felt as if I was being punished, as if my childhood God had come back to haunt me. I had fully expected the results to be negative. Instead, I discovered I have had the virus in my body for anywhere from five to seven years.
My background in AA then began to serve me well. My first thought after the shock wore off was, “I need a support group.” My Higher Power showed me then that he was taking care of me. Through the AIDS hotline, I had been referred to a meeting that had recently been started for IV drug users testing positive. I went to that meeting. It was in its second week. A drug counselor was running it. There was only the counselor, me, and a third person at this meeting. The third person was a girl like myself, five years sober, not an IV drug user, whose husband had also been a drug user and alcoholic years ago. We clung to each other during those first few months like two shipwrecked sailors. We shared our experiences, fears, hopes. We adapted the Twelve Steps and “How It Works” to our common bond, HIV positive. Since neither of us felt free to discuss this in an AA meeting, we needed the tools AA had given us to draw upon our strength and hope in living with this virus on a daily basis. The way of life we had discovered in AA kept us sober and sane in mind, body, and spirit, and we utilized these principles in coping with this virus.
What has emerged from all this pain, fear, and despair has been a gradual acceptance of the reality and uncertainty of my illness, as well as a gratitude for my Higher Power and a trust in him (at least most of the time, anyway). My Higher Power does provide for me as evidenced by the coincidence of a fellow AA member, a heterosexual woman, five years in sobriety, being at that particular meeting. Very few people are aware of my HIV status, but the people I have shared with besides my group have respected my anonymity and provided me with the love, care, and support I so desperately needed. I thought my Higher Power had deserted me and yet due to this program, and the way of life I had been practicing for the past seven years, my family was one hundred percent behind me. My two closest friends as well as my immediate family have shown me what true love and acceptance is all about. I have shared many tears with them as well as much laughter regarding this virus. You see, a person would never guess by my appearance that I carry this virus and, at times, it is very easy for me also to deny that reality. Humor at those times offsets for me the horrible reality of HIV.
Even though I sometimes despair of ever being intimate with someone again, I know through my past experiences in the program that when and if I am ready to share, my Higher Power will provide for me. I am single and I fully expected in my early thirties to experience motherhood and being a wife. My diagnosis as HIV positive changed that, for now, anyway. However, within every cloud is a silver lining and what I have learned from this virus is multifold.
The most important thing I learned is that life is too short. We must live only in today. We must live life to its fullest, giving it our best shot. For it is through living this way that we share the most important thing in life, which is love. It took a complete jolt like HIV to make me realize love is the only thing that has any meaning. I need people in my life today. My Higher Power speaks to me through people. Life is just too short to dwell upon past mistakes or to worry about future ones. Life is an experience meant to be lived, taking risks and knowing that the results are being cared for through our Higher Power. “Go with the passion.” I am trying to keep my life simple and just to appreciate all of life, the pain as well as the joy. My life is not over because of this virus. As a matter of fact, I have become more aware of just what is important in my life and I have eliminated what is not.
I have maintained my sobriety and health due to the way of life AA teaches and I wanted to share my story with you in hopes that someone who is in my position will realize their Higher Power has not deserted them. He is there. He will give us the strength to deal with this on a daily basis like our alcoholism, one day at a time, if we just ask, and accept what he gives us.
ANONYMOUS
At My Age March 2009
A little over a year ago, I was fired from my last job as a drug and alcohol counselor at a well-established treatment center. I was devastated: anger, frustration and denial were in full force as I was ushered out the door. I had been fired from the previous two positions I had held, and this was the charm! I felt worthless, bewildered and belittled. I felt that something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t persuade anyone to listen to me. At my AA group, all I got was a well-meant suggestion to take the Third Step. After 27 years of sobriety, I deserved better treatment than this, I thought.
I progressed in some sort of sickness that neither my wife nor I could pin down. I thought I was just depressed, and I had always found that one more meeting pretty well takes care of my depression. But not this time. I sank deeper and deeper and, finally, began to think suicidally, screaming to myself, “They’ll all be sorry when I’m gone.” As a last resort, I went to the hospital for evaluation.
While I was in the hospital, with my wife present and supportive through every single moment of the ordeal, I had both a stroke and a heart attack. The heart attack was the easier to deal with. The stroke, however, was a complete surprise to me, like nothing I had ever experienced. When I had recovered sufficiently, I was sent home with instructions that I was to be evaluated by a specialist. Upon following through, I was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. My team of doctors ordered me not to seek employment. I became officially “disabled.”
This was never supposed to happen to me! I came from a family filled with doctors and lawyers. I was a championship debater in college and a coach of national championship debaters. I had financed my way through college and graduate school on academic scholarships. I owned a computer programming business and had completed law school after staying sober for three years. I’d returned to teaching and become a school principal. Then, when I had gotten tired of teaching, I was certified as an alcoholism and drug counselor. Now, I could never work again. Ever!
Was this fair? Was this a part of the deal? Was I now relegated to a life of being “stupid, boring and glum”? I had a very difficult time reconciling my new status as terminally ill with my own mental self-image as “superman.” My wife tried to reassure me, my group listened patiently, and ultimately I got very tired of trying to “figure it all out.”
The last time I had felt this lost and alone was when I’d sobered up. I had been arrested in Lafayette, Louisiana, and strapped down in an isolation room until the police could figure out what to do with me. I knew as certainly as I know that I am typing these words that I heard the voice of my Higher Power clearly and distinctly saying, “Now are you willing to let me do this for you?” And since that moment, the moment I answered, “Yes,” I had never—until now—questioned the will of God in my life.
I have been praying to that voice that I heard 27 years ago. I have also started getting phone calls from newcomers, who ask how they can possibly stay sober with everything going on in their lives. I recognize the anger and fear in their words, but realize they are trying to follow directions, just like me. They’ve mirrored back to me my own insecure fears and that has actually been helping me knuckle under and follow my own physicians’ medical advice.
It took a long time for me to finally come back to the Third Step, as had been suggested when I first lost my job, but I’m grateful I did. It’s not such a bad
