HIV is not a death sentence!

This documentary stands at 22 minutes. I made it as part of my degree program in Broadcast Visual design. In this film I basically come out of the HIV closet and let the world know my status. What is remarkable about this film, that I shot in 2000 during the run up to the presidential election, is that I reveal the fact that I had at that time probably had been HIV positive for close to 25 years, however, I want to be clear that these are speculations based on factual data.

During my teenage years from 12 to 18 I became sexually active. This was in the late 60's and early 70's. HIV was just beginning to make the rounds and working its way into humanity and being spread through fast and free sexual encounters. It hadn't had enough of an incubation period to start making people sick. I was sexually molested when I was 12 years old and quite possibly I could have been infected by that man. Today I am 46 years old. However, the molestation was not a traumatic experience in the sense that I got say "raped" violently against my will. I actually was interested and intrigued by the experience as well as being afraid of being "found out" or "shamed". The man that molested me was in his mid 30's.

I wanted to make a documentary that used my own personal experience to bring hope to those who would watch this film. I especially tailored it to target those who have recently found out that they are HIV positive. I believe very strongly that beside the best of what modern medicine has to offer to people, there is another dimension to disease that is psychosocialspiritual. The psychology that is at work is pretty evident, the social interactions and repercussions that are at work are also evident, however the spiritual nature of healing is not evident and is at great risk when the other two areas are unresolved and/or in chaos. In my life this was absolutely true because I had come to loathe myself and I longed for death as a release from the shame and the guilt that I was carrying around for being such a sexually active teen. Death had become a self fulfilling prophecy in my life.

Imagine how it feels when a person first hears those words "you have tested positive for HIV" it sounds as though someone is reading your death sentence. Feeling this way is a perfectly natural reaction. However, after we have gone through our initial shock and the grieving stage then we need to move into the empowerment stage. This is the stage wherein we take full ownership of our situation, we move away from blame or trying to find a reason "why this happened to us." Energy spent on this kind of thinking only robs us of precious life energy that we need in order to live with this disease and create any sort of "quality of life" for ourselves. Also energy spent on this kind of thinking can become a trap or prison that keeps us from growing and possibly even transcending our situation. Moving into the empowerment stage turns us into self validating, self motivating and self loving individuals who readily enjoin the work of creating new realities for ourselves; realities within which we can begin to find joy.