Betting Friend

My First Year With My "Friend" Herpes Or How I Was Re-Born A
Modern-Day Leper
By Christopher Scipio

It was 1990, I was 24 years old and I didn’t think my life
could get any worse. I had just finished college and my
financial situation was worse than dire. The country was in the
midst of an economic depression. A long dismal winter had just
given up the ghost and to top it all off I was in the middle of
a horrific break-up with a vengeful girlfriend.

Of course it was pathetically naive of me to think that life
couldn’t get any worse and life wasted no time proving that
fact. My relationship with this beautiful, vivacious, urbane
woman had begun most promisingly. We had courted very
romantically by letter and phone for six months before ever
getting together. I was still at University when we first met
and we were separated by a distance of about 1200 miles. We
started off as friends and the love between us grew slowly with
all the optimism and passion expected with us both being in our
twenties. Sadly, what was so wonderful by distance was a
nightmare close up. When my classes ended and I flew down to
move in with her it took no time at all for things to go very
very wrong. Our sex life was hot despite the fact told me she
had Herpes. She told me that she could tell when she was
getting an outbreak and as long as we refrained from having sex
at those times, it was cool for us to have a natural unprotected
sex life. I believed her, and she certainly sincerely believed
that to be the case as well. She had only very recently gotten
the disease herself from a man she had casually slept with and
who didn’t tell her he was infected.

We got along in bed much better than we ever did out of bed.
The tall beautiful fair-skinned princess and her Tall, Black
dread-locked artist. The sad fact was that we didn’t get along
at all. Instead of creating harmony we created war. And I must
say that I am to blame for much it. I was at a time in my life
where my tolerance for certain things was very low and I was
very angry about how the world was treating me and I certainly
didn’t enjoy the treatment I was receiving from my beloved- but
I definitely contributed more than my fair share to the discord.
Once we were in the same space together the chemistry between us
was bad, bad, bad. The relationship ended after a mercifully
short time leaving us scattered, raw and dumb-founded.

Two days after the notorious breakup we were reunited by a
particularly cruel twist of fate. Less than 48 hours after
swearing I would never see her again I was sitting beside her
in the waiting room of a hospital. She was looking at me with a
combination of guilt, sadness and white-hot enmity. I didn’t
know how to feel or what to say to her. I was floating around
out in space trying to get a grip on the situation.

You see dear readers I was in the midst of what I would later
find out to be my first Herpes outbreak. It has started out as
an itchy irritation on my foreskin but had quickly turned into
a raging swelling colony of tiny lesions and I was overwhelmed
by pain and all the flu-like symptoms typical of first
outbreaks. I had no idea what was happening to me. I do
remember hoping at the time that it was anything but Herpes or
AIDS. I would have even considered syphilis or gonorrhea to
have been preferable. The doctors said they couldn’t tell what
it was that I had and had insisted that my ex-girlfriend of two
days come in with me so we could both be tested at the same
time.

Even though we both hated each other at the time- and I’m sure
she still does today, I remember feeling sorry for her. I knew
even then that if it proved true that she had given Herpes to
me, she would have been devastated too. So there we were with
all those mixed emotions dreading the worse and hoping for the
best.

Of course the doctor’s tormented us by making us wait about a
week before the test results would be back. They had taken a
swab of my lesions and sent it off somewhere. When the phone
call eventually came in the news was good. I had tested
negative for Herpes. The doctors said they still didn’t know
what it was that I had, that possibly it was just an infection
of my foreskin from having rough sex. I was over the moon with
relief and wasted no time in calling Her to tell her the good
news. For one brief moment we actually had something positive
to share together. That test result was a big reprieve for both
of us. Sadly, and once again ironically, it turned out only to
be a reprieve for one of us.

To her credit she had been upfront with me. At the time I
really had no idea what the implications and risks were. I was
however prepared to take the risk, I just had no idea that this
would literally be a very ironic last interaction in what had
been the worst relationship both of us would ever have in our
lives.

I went on with my life and forgot all about Herpes. But Herpes
didn’t forget about me, not for a second. I got another
outbreak two months later and then another one a month later.
It was angry as hell and I stormed into a different hospital
demanding to know what was wrong with me. At this hospital the
doctors were more competent and took one look at my penis and
told me that it was obvious that I had Herpes. They confirmed
this with their own cotton swab test- there was not blood test
for Herpes in Canada available at this point in history. They
told me that false negatives were common for Herpes because if
there wasn’t enough virus present on the skin at the time of
the test, then you would get a negative result even though you
had Herpes. They told me there was nothing they could do for me
and that I would have this disease for life and that my sex life
would never be the same. I wanted to call my ex-love and blast
her for what had happened. And even though she at the time was
wrecking vengeance against me by trying to destroy my career
and telling everyone who would listen how badly I had treated
her, I didn’t have the heart to throw this in her face. So I
have never told her that she gave me Herpes and I’ll never tell
her.

I do not possess the power to describe the world of pain and
shame the eventual diagnosis of Herpes would thrust me into. In
many ways I felt like my life was truly over. I felt dirty in a
way that I had never experienced before. Just saying the word
Herpes sent a chill thorough my whole body. The doctors were
cold and unsympathetic. I couldn’t discuss this with anyone in
my conservative West-Indian family even though we were
otherwise close. I didn’t have anyone to talk to. Strange
fatalistic fantasies went through my mind all day long, day
after day. The mere thought of having to tell someone that I
had this thing made me want to run for the cover of enforced
celibacy.

I felt cursed like some Old Testament character. Sure I had
been an asshole, not unlike most men my age, but I had
definitely not been enough of an asshole to deserve to be
punished by the Gods this way. This was definitely overkill in
all meanings of the word.

My first realization after being able to admit to myself that I
had Herpes was that it was forever. No matter what I did or who
I became I was never going to be a “whole” person. That I was
“marked” for life. That I had joined an outcast caste. I was
one of the many modern day lepers- those sad morally challenged
people with Herpes. I was a victim and I sure didn’t like the
feeling. What a burden to have to carry all the rest of my
life.

Yes, I was now one of them. But I had no real idea of what
being one of them really meant. To find out would take years
and many experiences both liberating and devastating.

Why am I telling you all of this? Part of it is narcissism to
be sure. It’s human nature to want your story preserved
somewhere in the ether and this is my way of making sure that
some people know what happened to me and how I felt about it.
But the larger part of my motivation is for my own
rehabilitation. I refuse to be a victim to this disease and to
society’s mean, irrational fear and loathing of those of us who
are stricken with sexually transmitted diseases. I wasn’t living
a high-risk lifestyle- I got my herpes in the context of a
monogamous relationship. But even if I had been doing high-risk
activities, I in no way deserve to be scorned or ostracized
because of it. The worst place to be when you have Herpes is in
the closet. If you want to feel like a leper and allow others to
treat you like one, be my guest, but I am determined not to live
like that. Instead of being imprisoned by this disease, I’ve
decided to free myself. I am no longer afraid of saying the
word and letting people know that I am one of “them”. I have
Herpes but Herpes doesn’t have me. I am at peace with the virus
and the virus is at peace with me. I am at peace with my place
in this world and I have discovered the joy of encouraging
others to liberate themselves from the stigma.

In part two of this Story- “Nine Years in the Wildness: My
Personal and Professional Quest for a Holistic Herpes Treatment
Plan, I will chronicle how I transitioned from being a victim of
Herpes to being a Holistic Herpes Treatment Specialist and a
Herpes spokesperson. I was able to turn the biggest negative in
my life to one of the biggest positives in my life and the
journey is just beginning. We are truly living in a Herpes
Nation with 60% or more of the general population in North
America having either type one or type two Herpes.

About the Author: Christopher Scipio is a homeopath and
herbalist with over twenty years of experience. For the past 14
years he has been a holistic viral specialist specializing in
the holistic treatment of herpes. His approach which he has had
the benefit of proving in his clinic and private practice is
simple, effective and without side effects.
http://www.natropractica.com - http://www.herpesnation.com

Source: http://www.isnare.com