And E Takes the Stage

There he is.

He's going public with a publication to rock the nation.

Or is the nation going to rock or rather stone him?

My absence in this blog symbolizes my contentment with my current life.

But I had to put this up because I am eternally a student in heart and mind and I would always question an action-- at times even over analyzing its outcome.

E has launched his book, Chronicles of E, and is adding an out of the closet (again [?]) flare of someone living in a third world country, with majority of the people living in fear of what E, I and a whole lot more of the alphabet have-- HIV.

I like E. I actually look up to him for a lot of reasons.

One of the most conniving reasons is because he, alongside some, are outing themselves and testing how the 'humans' (hehehe) will take it.

With how my family runs, I am compelled to pull back my horses and am given the advantage to observe and study all possible angles of these landmark actions.

Their actions are not something new; it's something probably hypothesized-- but I learned another angle that twists it: it's different when it hits home.

Speaking of home, some people who know me have already come up to me to quench their curiosity of hearing a rumor about me being positive. As of the moment, it is my prerogative to choose those whom will share my double edged sword.

My sincerest apologies to those whom I have misled. It is not yet time for you to know the truth about me, I believe. It is best that you continue to know me as you always did; I learned this because not all those I chose to open up to took it well. Some were swept with despair and could not face it.

For me, what started off as a new beginning has now turned into a psychological battle that will test my resolve and my penchant for survival's glory.

After all, there are those who aren't even infected who're simply not learning from already redundant experience. And unfortunately, these people come in huge numbers.

Is it not I who should feel despair for them instead?

I will sit back and watch how this unfolds.

I will share my lessons learned in time to all.

And to all, I pray that it is not too late.

When I Confide

Today, I witnessed two types of people who technically threw their lives for the simple yet frustrating predicament of 'too much of something'.

One is the more common and easier to notice-- someone I am akin to, who happens to have been loved and spoiled too much, reaps the fruits of his sloth and complacency. Talented, yes. Sterling in his craft? Definitely-- but talented people are a dime a dozen nowadays. He has always been able to keep situations within his comfort zone, even at 30 years of age.

At 30, you should have accomplished enough to support yourself and probably have had enough experience to sharpen your wits to find a partner who supplements your lifestyle in the spirit of fairness and feasibility: this is if you have plowed enough to gather enough experience and common sense.

Sadly, he can't be a brat forever. None of us can be. Life's patience runs thins on those who procrastinate.

Last year, I confided my being positive to him, not only to make him aware that it has really touched home but because it should have been a signal for him to get up, get moving and make the most of his life while he still can.

This day, I confided, once more, to an old friend who technically threw his life away by taking substance in over dose to put himself to rest. Temporary rest, I hope-- he's well on the way to recovery now, but the reason for it was the contradiction of the latter: he was swallowed whole by frustration in his job.

The guy had a big heart and a vision for the medical field and politics has reared it's ugly head within the ranks, rendering his efforts moot and his morale as broken as the columns and pillars of the twin towers during the September 11 attack.

Attacks: it does seem like life assails us when we do awfully too much of something. Life assails us to remind us of who we really are and that everything is not for ours to attain.

To subtly put it, life wakes us up when we begin to lose ourselves.

It woke me up with the virus that slumbers within me and this is the same reason why I confide to some: because I would hope to spare them from learning things the hard way by heeding my experience.

Alas, all may hear but not all may listen.

As children, we were loved and, for a time, were the centerpiece of our parents' and family's love and devotion. They would listen to our every whim and attend to our every need, for as much as possible.

We can't be brats forever and time will come when it is our turn to listen just by stopping and reflecting upon ourselves.

With pain we grow, but we are still the determining factor on which direction we take.

So when I confide to someone, it is of utmost care and concern on my part because I am taking the risk of giving off my position that the other may grow stronger just by listening.

So for those who read this: if you are at the peak of health yet wonder if you are still who you hoped you could be someday: you've got your health, use it well.

And for those who abuse their health to chase after their dreams: the moon's rising reminds us that there is time to pause and rest and let go of things for the moment. Rome was not built in a day so incorporreal ideals may take time and patience as well.

And to all, who are you now? I pray you've not lost yourselves.

The Warmest Hiatus

I've not updated my blog for a while because I've been busy living my life.

Grand?

No.

Not at all.

I am living life by celebrating another miracle-- love.

He is negative and he knows about me yet he loves me totally, madly, endlessly, boundlessly, truly, vigorously, honestly and most of all lovely.

Miracles do not end there: I am his first ever relationship in any way.

Did any sign of doubt come?

Nope, not from me. I opened my arms and embraced the truth: I can still be loved by a normal human being who knows the truth about me.

I embraced it. I was open wide to a white out that is worth all the anguish and tears that flooded my heart. There is no more fear when I am with him. Even without him, knowing he loves me, there is no fear-- although I do miss him terribly and my body cringes in weakness for I am but the satellite spinning around him, drowning in his radiance that thawed away the cold walls that I built myself to defend.

I am not meant to defend myself from anything.

That is what his love dictates to me.

I am to live a life I have not lost at all.

He's probably reading this now, since he knows about this blog... and he told me this as a reaction to some of my blogs:

'Every time I read something you wrote, particularly those about love, why do I get the feeling that what we have fails in comparison to the excitement, joy and intensity brought to you by the other guys you before?

Was it because I made it to easy? By skipping the getting-to-know stage, did I turn our love story into a lifeless weekly newspaper column that nobody ever reads?

I don't know why I suddenly felt it. Maybe I'm just naiingit because you have not written anything about me, but it's my fault because I have not given you anything interesting to write about. XP

I love you XXXX. I miss you. I miss talking about life with you.'

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blogs are records in cold binary data. Blogs are but a recording of something that can never be duplicated. And that is why I forgot to update: it's because I no longer need an outlet to store ammunition or coldness-- I'm out in the real world because of the miracle that this guy has taught me and that is love.

Who he is, what he has taught me and the life I live now are all miracles. Second chances that I know will be my last. Sad? Definitely not-- knowing now that life should be lived, why will I even think of any less than him?

I remember his tears falling onto my chest when he told me about thinking of the chance that the day would come that he'd be looking after me in my hospital bed. But still, it doesn't matter to him, because he loves me and he would be happy to spend his time with me in my living moments as well as my dying moments.

Selfish?

Who then?

I demand nothing from him, aside from our petty trivia. But when the day comes that he would demand of me?

I will not do it because the life I live now is influenced by his warmth. I will do it the same reason he does: because I love.

And so my absence will probably continue for a long time as I am grasping the moment not in binary data but in the warmth of his human hands and heart.

I am in love.

Excuse me.

And how can I type into my blog when both my hands are busy holding his?

Unexpected New Changes

As I write this blog, after a long stint of absence due to work and travelling, a family friend has just given birth-- her name is Chloe.

Just before her birth, other major catalysts of change happened, one of them was the leaving of a friend to a far away place wherein she can start a new life and, hopefully, acknowledge her errors and work on her character that she may truly grow.

This friend of mine is one of the people we could say that lost their way and, though loved by many, has done some actions that made conflict among friends and much suffering and emotional pain was garnered by all affected.

I, on my part, tried to do the rewards program of offering her something she would like every time she was able to refrain from taking drugs. There were times when I knew she did the drugs and would still have the gall to ask for rewards-- it made me resent her attitude, asking to myself why she'd even think I was born yesterday to believe her. With that little tilt of character, her principles have changed and all I could do was to sit and hope as the war grew longer and all sides were exhausted.

Life, mysteriously yet aptly, intervenes and quells the entire issue by making her leave to start anew in the USA.

The only thing I genuinely feel is gladness. Why not? It's a brand new beginning for her and I know, deep in her heart, like all of us, we all got tired too.

Aside from that mysterious boon in the sky that came in the form of a VISA and a plane ticket for my friend, another bona fide miracle has occurred in my life-- I am falling in love with someone who is negative and he, even though he knows i am positive, thank God, feels the same way.

Commemorating the pains that my last ex has wrought upon me: extorting my being positive to gain the upper hand in most situations was one of the worst things he's done aside from others, I really thought that I could only have a relationship with someone who is also positive: harder than finding the holy grail, indeed.

Like the change that I used to hope for that no longer expected at all, my friend leaving; another miracle comes in the form of a budding love from someone I would label as 'normal'.

Much like the fascinated Bella of Twilight to her undead vampire, Edward, this guy simply makes life much more worthwhile for someone like me, who sees life as a fleeting parade of grey areas. I rigorously enforced myself to be callous towards life. Wearing a mask painted with a smile, I was a cold alabaster manequine that saw the world as something to be calculated and measured with cunning and shrewdness.

My walls were not high enough for this lad's leap of faith just to see, and even be with, the fragile undead child that surrounded himself with shadows, roses and thorns.

He is a master. Unknowingly, he has disarmed all my conditionings to play it cool. He may not know this, but oh, he will when he reads this-- he is the greatest miracle that has happened so far in this new second life of mine. And though I know different miracles will still come in many other forms and things, I have thought and decided to myself that I would keep him for as long as my life could sustain.

Much like the ARVs that I am taking, with the adage that 'first is forever', since I am in a contract with mortality, making sure I must drink them every 12 hours from the time I drank it first, I am his first in almost everything we do.

Knowing this to be my second life, I have forgiven myself but will never forget my mistakes in the past.

With him, I will take those memories to heart and make sure he feels cherished. After all, memories are the only things I can take with me when I go ahead. Henceforth, the sweetest and happiest memories will involve him...

... for as long as my life can endure.

Well then, here goes...

Tipsy

They told me that getting drunk was bad for me.

Ok fine. I'm not drunk. I'm tipsy.

Tang ina. sarap. Shet.

The Oracle

It has been a while since I have returned to Baguio.

Being assigned to accomplish a task in the province by my mother, I was asked to travel on my own, once again, to a city to the far north of Metro Manila. A city where the scent of pines is forced to marry with the billowing clouds of automobile exhaust. A city I would frequent years ago due to the nature of my work; this city could actually stand on its own, without bothering if it would have been compared to the Philippines' NCR itself. It could just simply stand there and operate coldly like it's climate.

The chill was a fantastic yet familiar feeling to my once easily irritated skin.

My trips coming up to Baguio, prior knowing I was positive, saw me being easily growing fungus on my dermis. This trip I recently had saw no complications in my dermis at all. True enough, my immune system has gained ground and it shows beautifully.

Having dispatched the assignments that I was tasked to do, I met a new friend whom, in my sneaky way of leading the conversation about the issue of HIV in the Philippines, without letting them have a hint that I'm one of them, informed me that the virus has already rooted itself in the City of Pines and there have been 19 recently reported cases therein. These citizens of the cold city found out about it not in Baguio itself but at the beach zone that was kissing the mountain's feet: La Union.

Gathering the information, I concluded that the stigma, too, is imminent and that there are probably much more infected people that are not aware and are probably spreading the virus in a way that it would soon be as massive as the fog that sweeps Baguio's hills.

With the conversation being swept here and there afterwards, we touched down on the topic of vivid dreams and right there and then, I remembered one of my closest friend's heads up about someone who does more than just fortune telling. I thought of verbs or adjectives for it: scrying, clairvoyance, future sight but he told me that she presents the most precise possibilities in point blank verbs that are easiest to understand and if not, would be further clarified by discussion. Confidentiality, of course, was part of the bargain as it cost five hundred bukols.

And oh did a lump fall on my head because I remembered this at the last evening of my trip. I was glad the oracle (with all due respect, I'd call her that instead of a fortune teller) for believe she is more than just a mere fortune teller with the way she executes her craft. She responded aptly, probably in both our convenience. Was she THAT clairvoyant?

Initially meeting her, we were interrupted by her younger brother who turned out to be a former ally/nemesis in one of my on line gaming campaigns when we set a record in Philippine Online Gaming History nearly three years ago.

A small world indeed and quite smaller, in a cramped way, when she shut the door of her reading chamber once she began to perform her craft.

She spoke of me in a way I would never have admitted myself. She read through me and put me in insigna that I may finally put my finger on tangible verbs to the storms and rainbows that abound within my viral cytoplasm. Shortly put, she told of things I knew but was never able to say and acknowledge and therefore was never able to process.

She saw how anger was intricately woven into my system and that it has been the drive that keeps me fighting and has also been the culprit that makes me fall-- all these in a case to case basis. Change? Difficult, for it is me. A trait, a characteristic and possibly a large part of my persona that makes me who I am. surprisingly to most, it would not be evident at first for it is subdued by my (as she read) intellect and somehow it has always been my saving grace in drawing the line between me and an angry barbarian who's running after someone who stole his club.

An intriguing prologue, it was. Though, of course, I was after something: answers, definitely. I openly told her about my situation and one of my questions was pinned down at how long I have to live. The answer was ridiculous:

"You'll have lived way much more than you have expected, and probably have enough time to spare..."

A cure is coming perhaps? Or is it the fight in me that would keep me running the extra mile in joining the Energizer Bunny and it's endless drumming.

I was born free, baptized Roman Catholic without my consent (as if I could say no back then) and finally ended up agnostic at the age of reason. And thus, for guidance, I seek it from our Creator's creation, this woman; a product of our Creator. So you can't vex me on that.

Eager? Anxious? What am I feeling now for the things I've learned about myself with her guidance? More of eager. Eager because, ultimately, my anger or wrath will soon be slated with results that will exact not vengeance but justice.

Ri~ght. It wasn't vengeance that need be sought. It was justice. And it happens to come in the right time and place so long as I keep my end of the bargain which is suffer, work and drama for it. Sounds fair? Actually, surprisngly to me, yes. I've come to the point where I don't really need a one up or more on someone to make myself feel satisfied for the day. Just work it and I'll be working it.

Sigh.

I'm back in Manila now. I'll miss those 10 hour long sleeps that can actually have further 30 to 45 minute snoozes. These slumbers begin and end with the same and non moving position. If sleep is a blessing, sleep in the City of Pines (especially in my house there) is a bona fide miracle! And it's not gonna happen again to me till I get back up there. *GROAN*

I've gained further information about the virus and how it has affected Baguio. I've gained new friends, including the oracle. And ultimately, a blessing in disguise, I'm spiritually and clairvoyantly assured.

Anger going away? Nope, not at all. I wouldn't be stubbornly getting well if not for that drive. Even if she called it a double edged sword, I'd rather have that than nothing.

Should I be expecting something? Oh, not at all. Expectation is the road to ruin, therefore, what I'm going to do is put all of what I've heard at the back of my head, continue what I'm doing and if anything simliar to what I've learned happens, then... I've to see her again.

PRONTO.

For How Long?

238.

That was my very first CD4 count when I found out I was positive.

How could it have been that low when my body was as strong as a horse? Though I recall having minor itches but that's all.

Like it's said about HIV, the virus feeds on your CD4 cells, therefore weakening your immune system. At 238, I was 39 points away to becoming a person with AIDS.

I couldn't ask back then because the shock was already too much. It made me go out to the quadrangle of RITM, look up to the sky and wait for an answer to pop out of the clouds. I was helpless. No sound logic could make me cope at all during those moments.

I just simply had shut up and breathe till I calmed down, back then, because more than 6 months ago, the jargons and terms used by people who have it and the people who deal with them were barely assimilated into my vocabulary.

I calmed down because of what they said: "Don't worry, it's time you took the ARV."

ARV. Anti retro viral drugs. It's not a total cure, but in a nut shell, it works like an anti biotic which you have to take on time, religiously, if you want to keep the viral load in your body down and your CD4 cells to go up. The problem here is, anti biotics kill the virus that makes you sick, ARV cannot penetrate through to your marrow to kill the dormant viri so all it could do is kill the ones that are prancing around like faeiries on Jaeger bombs in your blood, hence it's not a total cure. If you fail to be consistent with the ARV, the virus will develop an immunity to the drug and you will have to go try another cocktail combination again.

Think it's easy adjusting to a very toxic drug?

The trial periods for ARV combinations are not easy; there are chances wherein you could get fevers, burning sensations, rashes and other complications that I didn't want to hear about. I got hit with the fever and I almost passed out in a mall during that time. My sweat was cold, I was clammy all over, it felt like the animus was leaving my body and it was getting dark and grey at the blurry sides of my vision.

Hard enough?

I couldn't take paracetamol anymore. There are medicines that normal people take that you can no longer take when you are on ARV. At that point, I was told by the doctor that I should take fluids, rest, fruits, vitamins and PRAYERS.

Wow, prayers. Indeed, that was hell. But the operating word is now 'was'.

The period's long over now with my body fully adjusted to the Lamivudine/Zidovudine and Nevirapine combination (my ARV cocktail). My CD4 count has risen to 380 and my immune system is up again. The itches on my skin are gone and I just have to continue taking my meds on time as if it were a legally signed contract with the Grim Reaper.

But why 238 righ away? How come so low?

They estimated that I would have had it 4 to 5 years already being that my CD4 count was already that low.

4 to 5 years? That means... How many did I infect without me knowing?

I recall within those 4 to 5 years, my wild side would've made Steve-O and the cast of MTV's Wild Boys and Jack Ass look like a bunch of Carmelite Nuns.

No doubt about it, I could have infected someone already. So what do I do? I didn't mean it back then. Really.

Right now, what I'm focusing on is fortifying myself from within and working my way outward. Seriously, theatrics aside, this is just me. I'm not the hottest piece of gay meat in Metro Manila (but I'm not the ugliest for sure!) so it made me think (as the competitive sports enhusiast that I am): someone out there could be planting more than I am without them knowing it.

They could just be out there screwing someone silly and planting doom. Jeez, why the sudden sprite of concern going on?

Closing my eyes before I wrote this, I thought to myself: that middle aged man from Ayala Heights wasn't joking-- we are destroying ourselves without us knowing it. And true enough or possibly, knock on wood, even worse, mysterious deaths will come sweeping the country within 5 to 10 years.

I think he was pertaining to those who have it, are spreading it around, and won't check at all and will only find out when it's too late. The pattern could be the same with those whom they have infected. It'll just be like a domino of a grand necrological scale.

And cmon, you don't have to be hot or cute to get laid. You just need to be horny! It's that simple! Just turn out the lights and you can let your dreams and fantasies get of!

Speaking of dreams, I've dreamt of this, I think my dreams had somethign to do with this. I can't really put it vividly here because some of my friends know my dreams as I've shared it with them because I have had dreams that are so vivid and I actually remember them still. It just involved a lot of people dying around me.

All this thinking plus the multiplication table that they have in figures about infectoids infecting others and so on and so forth. We're talking auto genocide like they said.

5 years: that's how long I've had it at most.

5 years: that's how long it'll take for those who do not know to die.

So for how long?

How long before the entire country realizes that it's really here in front of our faces? And by realizing, how long before they accept? And by accepting, how long will it take before they act upon it?

Healing myself, I sit here in front of the screen, with but pieces of a bleak future for a lot of people, in my head.

I am lucky that I know and I am able to buy myself time with this drug.

What about the others who don't know?

For how long?