Nobody dies of AIDS; It is the secondary infection, usually something like a cold, that kills the victim. If they were not ill with HIV, the body could fight off the infection, but as it is, it cannot. Something small, something insignificant finally executes the coup de grace.In that context the seemingly "insignificant" infection of a mundane stripe takes on a significance that it would otherwise have never had warranted. Because the body's defenses are otherwise occupied and weakened, the cold goes thermonuclear and claims the life of the sufferer. Dead. It was not the AIDS that killed him or her, it was the cold. But that cold could have done nothing of the sort had the sufferer not been ill with AIDS.
I know that there is no comparison between my issues and those that are so life-threatening. I have simply hit an emotional nadir. It feels like all of that shit that I have suppressed for so damn long is pushing its way out; memory being one source of the cuts that are draining me. For me it feels like a death from 1000 pricks. I could withstand a body-blow; I would even prefer a body-blow, I know where to fight back and who my adversary is. I feel like I am bleeding from 1000 cuts. Each, on its own, would be insignificant. Together they are a life threatening hemorrhage, a crimson tide that ebbs slowly away from the shore of life.
As I write those words I feel like I am engaging in histrionics or hyperbole. I don't mean to diminish the suffering of persons with AIDS; indeed I have lost at least five friends to that plague. When I think about persons that have severe issues like AIDS and I look at myself I feel shame. Another cut, another drop. I worked with a woman whose estranged lover came back to her. She made love to him, got pregnant. When she went to tell him, she found his home being clearned by the family. They informed her that he had died of pneumonia, secondary to HIV. Years later, she and her baby died of AIDS.
I suppose that depression is the triumph of the subjective. Freud says that it is anger turned inward. I don't know that this is the case. For me it is feeling overwhelmed and lacking the strength to respond. All of the little things are having their way with me, like secondary infections that otherwise would have been defeated by the body's defenses become bullies when T cells are gone. I don't feel the steel any more. I used to be made of such strong stuff.
When a man comes to the abyss that stares into the darkness, there he finds his character... I'm afraid to open my eyes.
