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This Christmas days I had nothing to do, no homework neither studying at all, a friend of mine presented me her cousin, a 22 year old boy. Nothing notorious about him. Brown hair, brown eyes, he wasn´t tall nor short... We were hanging out in a mall buying Christmas presents, and we spent the money left in a hot chocolate and a coffee. The conversation drove us throughout the most typical topics: school grades, family situation, platonic loves and no so platonic ones…

Suddenly, an alarm started ringing. It came out from the boy´s phone. His face betrayed surprise, as if he had forgotten whatever the alarm was reminding. “Excuse me, I have to leave a second” he said.

My friend and I continued talking normally until he came back from the toilet. He was a little bit pale, and from that moment he didn´t touch his chocolate cup again. I couldn´t avoid to ask: “Are you okay?” “Yes, it is just the medication”, he said. “I understand you. Christmas is the best time of the year to pick up a cold or flu”, I said.

My friend kicked me under the table. He was very serious. There was a moment of a very uncomfortable silence.

“I´m sorry if I have screwed it up".

“No, don´t worry, it´s okay. But the medication isn´t for that kind of illnesses. I´m actually seropositive”.

Such a pity that nobody took a picture of my face in that precise moment. A mixture of surprise, guilt and compassion.

“Don´t feel sorry for me. I´m actually very lucky. I´m not going to die of my illness, as thousands of people in the eighties did. But I will die with it. What people with HIV nowadays need is the normalization of the illness and the awareness of the population to prevent new infections. The last thing we want is creating a bigger stigma on it.

This has also been a way for me to mature. My common sense when I got the disease, at 17 years old, was inexistent. I never thought something like this could happen to me. Why me? Why now, with all the life ahead, waiting for me? The laws of chance are mysterious and infinite.

Don´t be afraid of us. We are all humans. We have a complete normal life. The only thing we want is to educate people”.

That was a day to remember. We continued talking about the virus and how society needs to change.

Sometimes meeting new people makes you wiser. 



Lucía Montero Celeiro