Ramblings of An Aging Gay Guy

 into this dark and twisted nest resides a branch than can not rest, growing smaller every day waiting for life to begin again, over and over too many agains.  Ancient raw bark outside hides the life inside, hard outside, wet inside.     a whistle and some time go by, caught up in the windy fray, sweeping branches up I go, into old I go.  Never a doubt with God's whispered  shout, water running a course before even the drop knows is way, going down down down until the drop is swallowed by the shore, forgetting itself what it was before.    what am I this dark and twisty thing, flowing and from air to sea?  Am I everything in between?  No way no how not even a shape to go by.  From dusk to dawn I swim so far that not even I can find back to then.     i wanna hold on I wanna forth but right now I just don't get which one I am supposed to do, driving me deeper down into the cycle of round and round.  Dizzy ...

In our modern culture, it has been pounded into our heads that to be strong in this world means that you must be an island unto yourself.  This sentiment is even more true for people who belong to a minority group.  II have heard people say that they have to work twice as hard to get half as far, and though I believe this strategy will only burn someone out in the long term. As a middle-age gay man with HIV and clinical depression, I struggle every single day with a variety of hurdles.  Some of these hurdles are external, some are of my own internal creation.  Most days I maintain some sort of stasis, some sort of equilibrium, I keep myself balance in the ups and downs in life. But sometimes...sometimes it all gets to be a bit too much to handle.  Everyday is a battle and sometimes I lose.  Much like running an engine at high RPMs will overheat and eventually crack an engine block, sometimes life becomes overwhelming..   There are garden-variety life-c...

It has came to my attention, though it should not have surprised me, that my depression is taking it’s toll on my relationship.  I have been told that I am unaffectionate, that all I ever want to do is stay in bed to read and sleep.  I have been told that I never want to do anything around the house, as far as chores go.  I have been told I have let myself go.  I have been told that I am defensive and always in a foul mood.   I guess for the most part, a lot of that is true.  Though I do not want to hide behind my depression and use it as a shield or excuse, there are consequences to being depressed that affect more than just the depressed person.   When I visualize the effect of my depression, I see a bulls eye...with my at the center glowing red and the degree of how much my depression affects others depends on how close one is to the bulls eye.  The closer to the bullseye then the more immediate and impactful my depression is on you.  The ...

I think one of the first things people think of when they hear the word HIV is that people have to take a lot of pills.  Oh I am sure it is not the very first thing that comes to mind, but I would say “drug cocktails” is a term from the old days that rears it head in one’s consciousness. Granted, drug regimens today are nowhere near like they were 15, 10, or even 5 years ago.  Science is making leaps and bounds every year when it comes to HIV treatment.  For so many years, especially at the beginning of the epidemic, the focus of HIV research had to do with treatment.  Our collective knowledge expanded exponentially.  Not only were new drugs coming into being but also new classes of drugs that attack the virus at various points in the HIV replication cycle. I do not in any way diminish or trivialize the drug cocktails of the past, nor those that had to take them.  However,  I really, really get tired of taking pills.  Everyone always says that HIV...

So, something happened to me at work this week that I am not terribly proud of.  This one girl at work had came up to me and engaged in conversation.  I won’t go into the boring details of office gossip.  However, at the tail end of our conversation she tells me, and I quote... “Hey, you know that adult bookstore up there off the interstate?” she says in her best country twang, “make sure you don’t ever go there because I know somebody who knows somebody who got AIDS there!!” My only response that I could muster was that I would never go into such a place to begin with, I wasn’t that kind of person.  She then playfully calls me a prude, laughs, and then leaves my office. Now, no one at work, except for one person whom I trust dearly, knows I have HIV.  I am sure that girl was in her own way trying to tell me to be safe, though in a backhanded, uneducated way.  I was offended that she thought I would go to such an establishment, and taken aback that she beli...

I am feeling very low today.  Physically, I look awful.  Mentally, I am not with it.  Emotionally, I am neutral/numb.   I feel invisible.  I feel weak.  I feel not enough.  I feel unneeded.  I feel all of these things that I was hoping an antidepressant could just magically eliminate.  I guess no pill can be a substitute for reality, but isn’t that always the expectation when beginning an antidepressant?  Just the name of the class of drugs give you hope that one will eventually not be depressed.   I know part of the reason I feel this way is because I have been sick, again...yet again.  This time it was a sore throat, one that has lasted a week now and is only now starting to get better.  I am frustrated because part of me has the mistaken belief that I should not get sore throats since I no longer smoke.   I am tired of my life being a sentence composed of illnesses strung together with no period at the end....

The ending of this holiday leaves me feeling indescribable sadness.  It is as if I feel all of the world’s loneliness and all of the world’s loss.  It isn’t even just because of the recent shooting in Newtown, CT.  It is a sadness in how American culture has turned out: something that is BIG, BIG news today, is forgotten tomorrow.  Already, not even two weeks after the school shooting, you can hardly find a single news article on the subject. What happened to everyone’s passion?  Did it, too, die like those children? The school shooting is really just the latest symptom of an apathetic American society.  Every single day children die from hunger, yet there is no call to arms.  Every day there are shootings, yet they leave no impression on the collective psyche.  Every day people still die from HIV and AIDS, yet to find a news story on anything HIV related is like looking in a field for a 4-leaf clover. I know New Years is a few days off; and I kno...