I met my current husband when I was still married. No, that is not the reason that I am 49 years old and living with the HI Virus. My ex-husband and I were in the process of divorcing. After ten years of marriage his dalliances and ugly temper had begun to create a chasm in our relationship. He was quite happy to stay married, but there’s only so much the human spirit can take.

Meeting the Man Who Gave Me HIV

My husband and I are both HIV positive. Call it a case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. I imagined myself in love. I was in love and I imagined he felt the same way. We met through mutual friends.

For a while he courted me and after many years of abuse from my ex-husband, the light emanating towards me from this tall, handsome man felt like angels had spread out their wings and given me a safe place to fall. I felt an excitement I hadn’t experienced in a long time. My heart beat faster. My knees turned to jelly whenever we were together. It was exactly like what you read in fairytales, but, of course, it was whimsical exultation.

When he asked for my hand in marriage, saying yes felt like the right thing to do. Back in those days, it wasn’t seen in a positive light to be divorced, let alone to be single. People looked at you as if there was something wrong with you.

A Woman’s Worth

Marriage changed things between us. Maybe I am wrong and it wasn’t marriage, but rather our expectations of what marriage would bring. Nowadays, young women and men talk openly about what each will bring to the union. In the sixties and seventies and being a black female living under the apartheid government where our men were emasculated, it was expected of us to be submissive.

Perhaps I am not translating it properly, but in Zulu we call it ‘ukubekezela’, which means we must sit and take it. That’s what women did. In English you say, ‘you’ve made your bed, now lie in it.’ Of course this is not an issue that started in the last century. For millennia women were seen, and in many cases are still seen, as the lesser sex.

Our needs, our desires were not as great as men’s. In addition to working the same hours and possibly even more than our husbands, we had to raise children, cook, clean, do the laundry, iron and, at the end of the day, lie back and have sex.

Marriage, Adultery then Aids

The moment the ring was on my finger, my husband became a stranger. Though he has never laid a hand on me, his abuse has felt more painful. He took me away from my family and we moved to another town where I knew no one. He would disappear for days on end, leaving me on my own in this big house, in a town where houses were situated so far from each other. In fact, we lived in a mining town and there was nothing to do.

When he returned I would beg him to take me shopping just so I could get out of the house. I was so lonely. If I questioned him, he would simply ignore me, get into the car and stay away for a few more days. Over the years I learned he had a mistress whom he had been with before he even knew me.

She wasn’t the only one. I don’t have the exact number, but there were several women in his life and though I was married to him, I was at the bottom of the list

Learning I Am HIV Positive

The shame of facing my family with another divorce was just too much to bear, so I stayed. We had children. I was the model wife and I strived to be the perfect mother. In 1998 I applied for a life policy and it was standard to take an HIV test. I did so willingly, not knowing that my life would change drastically.

I had to hear it from a stranger that I was HIV positive and would eventually get Aids. My world collapsed. When I spoke to my husband about it, he didn’t deny anything. He had known for a while that he had contracted the HI Virus and still willingly passed it on to me – his wife, the mother of his children.

Living Through the Years of Darkness

Those first years were the hardest of my life. When I look back, it seems like all I did then, just after I found out, was cry. I beat my hand on my chest, immersed in this awful darkness that I would die a slow, painful death, perhaps never to see my children graduate from school or even get married; let alone to witness the light in my grandchildren’s eyes.

All I had strived for over the years felt so meaningless. I didn’t tell my children straight away as they were so young. I couldn’t burden them. The stigma associated with the HIV is terrible, so I had no one to turn to. I felt ashamed that I had the disease. Back then it wasn’t like it is now. I knew so little about HIV and Aids.

In my mind, I imagined that I would drop down and die. I imagined I only had a few months to live. Those were some of the darkest days of my life. Thinking I would die any moment, I started on plans to provide for my children.

I had to cancel all my life policies as they wouldn’t pay out when I died from an Aids-related illness. It felt like all the years of my life had been a lie and I had never existed and would never exist.

My Husband Loses the Battle with the Disease

About a year after I found out my husband suddenly took ill. In a matter of months he lost weight, had mouth ulcers, contracted shingles and had such a horrible case of diarrhoea that he couldn’t leave the house in case he defecated on himself. I thought he was dying. In fact, I think he would have died, had I not been at his side; nursing him as he lay on the hospital bed.

I have a good heart. I say that without arrogance or boastfulness. My husband on the other hand was not kind-hearted. As he lay on his death bed, I washed him, I fed him, I talked to him and I kept his faith intact. At this point, all his so-called friends had deserted him. He was no longer the life of the party. All the women in his life had stopped calling. Strangely enough, I felt pity for him.

The man I had married, confident, healthy, tall and proud disappeared before my eyes. Looking up at me was a gaunt, wasted man whose own spirit was deeply wounded. While I felt sorrow for him, make no mistake, I was aware that he had brought it upon himself. That is when my anger came. It washed over me like a tidal wave, dunking my head under an ocean of emotions that many times I couldn’t breathe for the fury I had in me.

Denial then Anger

As he slowly became well again, I longed to punish him. I found any opportunity to get into arguments with him so I could scream and shout at him, letting him know what he had brought upon me, upon my children. I let him know time and time again, through vicious words, uncooked dinners, long solitary hours, ignoring him, snapping at him that he had killed my dreams.

At this point, I had to tell my children. I did so as gently as I could, but I cried as their eyes changed in front of me from gaiety to a deep sadness. They refused to look at their father. With them on my side, I mounted a campaign to kill his spirit.

I just couldn’t find it in my heart to forgive him. I don’t know why I never left him. Maybe I still loved him. Maybe I stayed to punish him and make him never forget what he had done.

A Family Torn Apart by Disease

Nonetheless, while the children were angry too, he was still their father and that wouldn’t change. They still cared for him. I couldn’t ask them to turn from him, even though I had. At some point, after furious counselling with psychologists, caregivers and priests, he looked at me and apologised to me, to the children.

It didn’t make a difference to me. My hatred and anger were still palpable, always at the ready to strike. My children echoed repeatedly that I leave him, but I was scared. Who would want anything to do with me? I felt old and used. I didn’t believe in love anymore. I couldn’t think of being in another relationship. Divorce just seemed traumatic.

Shortly after his illness, we both started on anti-retroviral treatment. I refused to see the same doctor or go to the same hospital for treatment. I refused to touch him. I refused to know the father of my children. I refused him all of me. I stopped cooking for him. I stopped caring for him. I just stopped being a wife, even though I was a mother to the children.

Being HIV Positive Changes My Life

Now that he was so ill, he had to leave work. He became dependent on me for everything. Fortunately, although I have had a few bouts of illness, I have remained relatively healthy. It’s been over ten years and I am still going strong. Funny enough, the roles in our relationship have changed. My children have moved out of the house and it is just their father and I now.

Over the years we have had to change our diet, making sure we add enough fruit and vegetables to keep us going strong. I find it annoying that I am forced to take medication every day, twice a day. I used to remind him whenever I popped the pills that it is his fault we are in this situation.

He cooks for me now. I make the money. He cleans and I go out with my friends or spend time with my family. Now he asks me, as I used to ask him, to take him shopping just so he can get out of the house.

Finding Acceptance through My Grief

I am no longer angry with him. After many years of seething, I have finally forgiven him. These days we are more like brother and sister than husband and wife. We have learned to laugh together again. We talk about other things beside this illness. I don’t know, maybe it’s knowing what this illness has done to him that I realise I don’t have to punish him anymore. I know every day he is alive, he regrets what he did. I don’t know if he would do things differently if he had another chance.

My life has changed. The other day I was sitting reading a book when I realised that this year all my policies would have been paid out. I could have been R1-million richer. I had a pang of anger, but I worked through that and ditched the feeling. Peace of mind is more important now. HIV is not a death sentence, even though it feels like it when you hear someone tell you that you’re positive.

Forgiving and Letting Go

Like I said earlier, I am learning to appreciate life more. I have done my penance, so now I get to enjoy my life. I do have to be a little bit more careful when it comes to nutrition and my health, but other than that I am alright and life is good. I am grateful for the wellbeing of my children. My entire family knows my status now. It took some courage, but I told them.

Having said that I know firsthand what HIV and Aids can do. Hopefully, my children learn from their parents’ mistakes. Hopefully, the young people today can learn from their peers who are dying and from their parents who have died. Let’s not make it that our children’s children look back to these times and wonder why we didn’t do enough to stop this pandemic.

I have told my story and I hope, you, who are reading this, who is HIV positive, will reach out to another. Everyone is affected by this disease.