The Letter X...

I am taking the letter "X" to Xeno, referring to something strange, foreign or different.  Some of us may have xenophobia or even xenophilia, but some of us find that the strange is much more pervasive in our lives.

When you are diagnosed with HIV or some other chronic illness, you may find that your life soon becomes something difficult for you to recognize as your own.    The life I live now is markedly different from the life I lived while I was still healthy before my diagnosis.  I was a club person, who didn't like to even admit there were waking hours before noon.    I was more outgoing, gregarious & well more fit.

I'm not sure if I somehow became a stranger living my life or if I was me living some stranger's life.  Either way, this was not the life I knew &  wasn't the me that I had been before.  It all changed.  My life was foreign to me & I didn't like it one bit.  

I've done my best to come to terms with this new life.  There are still things I miss from my old life. But now, I'd be a stranger in that life.  I wish I could say I didn't ask for this, but most other HIV patients didn't either & in a way I did.  No one forced me to take the actions that led me to being +, so I did make choices.  I just didn't fully recognize the ramifications of those decisions I was making.  Such is life.

How do you deal the strange?  Are you xeno to yourself?  To be strange is to be different, but to be different does not equate to being bad.  Different is just that, different, nothing more or less.  It's OK to be the strange one, we are all at some time or another. 

Cya