I’m a thirty-year-old mother of two. I am also HIV positive, but I am doing well. I’m currently in nursing school, trying to find a direction for my life. It wouldn’t be right to say that my story began in 2010, but I could say this story that I am about to share with you started when I met the father of my children in 2010. I was only eighteen years then. His name is Kweku. We met through a mutual friend and became friends. Later in our friendship, he asked me to be his girlfriend. I had a boyfriend then so I turned him down politely.
Along the line, my boyfriend and I had a problem that we couldn’t resolve so we broke up. A few months later Kweku reached out to me. He said, “I heard you are single now. So will you consider my proposal? I am still interested in you.” This time I didn’t turn him down. We didn’t live in the same town but I gave our long-distance relationship a shot. We were determined to make the relationship work, so we made time to meet from time to time. Everything was working smoothly until one day he texted me, “We need to talk.” My first thought was, “When did anything good ever come out of we need to talk?”
I called him immediately and asked, “What awful thing do you have to say to me?” He went quiet for a while before spilling out the words, “I haven’t been feeling well lately, a recurrent case of dermatitis. So, I went to the hospital to get it checked out. They ran a series of tests which included an HIV one. That was the only one that came out positive.” I had a lot of questions, the first of which was, “How did you get it?” “A drunken mistake,” was all he said. I was devastated. I didn’t need a test to tell me that I got it too. We had had shuperu without protection.
I cried and refused to eat or go outside for days. When I felt I had grieved enough, I went to my mother and told her everything. She stood by me and took me to the hospital to get the test done. And unsurprisingly, it came out positive. We went through counselling, and I was given medication. And through everything, my mother was my rock. She let me understand that my life doesn’t have to end because of my medical condition. Just when I came to terms with things, I found out that I was pregnant.
I told Kweku about it, and he was willing to do whatever I needed him to do. When I told my mother too, she said, “Well, the two of you have the same medical condition. You might as well get married and raise this child together as a family.” I was a bit sceptical about getting married and having a baby at the age of twenty, but I agreed to marry Kweku.
My marriage to him opened my eyes to the kind of person he was. And that person was a man who slept with anything in skirts. He used my stomach as a punching bag when I confronted him about it. And that led to the miscarriage of my first pregnancy. Did I leave him after that? No, I didn’t. I was so much in love with him that I thought I could change him. However, I was wrong. The abuse continued through the years and I couldn’t even tell anyone.
He berated me for the least thing, and constantly told me; “I am the only man who can put up with you. If you leave me no man will want you.” And the sad part about all of it is that I believed him. I believed every negative thing he said to me about myself. And I looked on as he refused to take his medication and went about infecting people. I lost my self-esteem and lost so much weight in that period.
In 2017, I found out he was sleeping with a fourteen-year-old child. I couldn’t keep quiet about that. We had two kids by then, and the mother in me was angry at what my husband was doing to someone’s child. I confronted him and called him out to be a paedophile. He got angry and beat me within an inch of my life. It was after that incident that I realized that it would only get worse. I decided that enough was enough so I packed my stuff, carried my kids, and went to my family.
The day I went home was supposed to be a happy day but my family cried when they saw me. The happy, outgoing and bubbly person they knew was just a shadow of her former self. He had succeeded in quenching the fire that used to burn bright in my eyes. My family invited him over to discuss what had happened. They wanted to resolve the issue but I knew better than to go back to him. I stood my ground and told them that I wasn’t interested in the marriage anymore. It was a customary marriage so we returned his drinks to his family and the marriage was dissolved. It’s been five years since I left that marriage. The journey hasn’t been an easy one, but I am happier now than I have ever been in a while.
Now my problem is, I’ve been in a couple of relationships after my divorce and it was with men who have the same health status as mine. And from what I have seen and heard, most people with my condition do not treat themselves or their partners right. They live as though there is nothing to live for, and that’s toxic. I would love to get married to a man who will respect me but I am worried that wouldn’t find love outside my community of infected men. I have been consistent with my medication, so I am currently undetectable. I won’t be able to infect anyone. But how many clean men will not run from me when they find out about my status? I am certain that even my colleagues in the nursing profession will treat me differently if I open up to them about my condition.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here looking for a date or anything. I am here to seek advice on how to function in the dating world. I know that I’m not alone in this so where are all those people like me? I want to be friends with some of them if they can reach out to me. Sometimes I get sad when I think about the stigma that we face. Will there ever be a happy ending for people like us? This is something that keeps me up at night.
