I mean it helps if you’re an optimist basically, as opposed to the opposite. I mean, if you’re too much prone to sort of giving in too easily and doom and gloom and nothing easily and nothing else is on your horizon, then you’re going to have more of a problem with these pills because there will inevitably be days when one of the pills is upsetting you in some way or another. There will be problems with occasional side-effects from them, or indeed some of the HIV symptoms may themselves blow up, and it takes you a little while to get treatment for the individual symptoms, and for these for the treatment to take effect upon those things. So theres no point being worried, you just have to accept that’

I mean if you, I mean I occasionally get the KS, the Karposi’s sarcomas. I mean theres no point panicking, if one turns up, you just wait until the next time you see the doctors, and then advise them and if theres anything to be done about it, then it’s done at that stage.

Being young at 17 and then going through this huge experience, does impact as you get older your views of relationships and how do you go about it. You know like recently I’ve wanted to do things perhaps other young people have done and go out and have fun and party. Meet someone, not worry about HIV but’ reality is I just can’t, you know I can’t live a normal life. That’s why I say it’s not a manageable illness. Because it does place restricting, you know restrictions on the way in which you live or go about… You know you can’t, you can’t be like your friends. But part of me wouldn’t want to be either. But it is extremely difficult and lonely. You know trying to be honest and find someone that’s going to be honest with you. Because if I’m going to sleep with somebody then they need to know I have HIV, and that leaves you automatically open and vulnerable and all of that stuff. But, you know it’s, it’s worth just being yourself, I can’t be anything more. But it doesn’t always go into my favour and, you know, that can be quite difficult dealing with some peoples reactions.

I started to, I, I started to tell myself there was no point in, in unnecessarily getting yourself down and into a, a quagmire of frustration, anger and hopelessness. You know, I know it’s, I know it’s an incurable illness. I know it, it’s a virus that lives in, in the, in your bloodstream. It does reproduce. But I mean the medication I’m taking blocks the action of the reproduction of this virus. Now with that in mind, that’s enough for me to be able to live as a normal life as possible. If I do become unexpectedly ill or if my cell count drops to such a low level and the viral load becomes detectable again and descends to a limit that is unacceptable to any member of the medical profession, a specialist, someone who works an HIV treatment, then that would create cause for concern. But until then I’m just going to live as normal life as possible.

Well I still, I still I use the word positive mental attitude, but I think that my philosophy is I don’t’ I might sound angry with the system, and angry with society and the way they are treating people with HIV, but I’m not really angry with them. I am part of you know, I am part of that same society. However, I think that I would rather be angry with the virus.

How do you do that?

I have done lots of things over the years, and obviously I have participated in lots of complementary therapies’ aromatherapy, massage, Reiki. I have even been to spiritual lessons’ spiritual classes. Basically just to find some inner peace if you like. And in some cases’ although I use the term positive mental attitude, deep down inside I am actually quite a negative person.

I do get very frustrated that I don’t always have the energy to do what I want to do. I haven’t been able to work full-time for a few years. Which, again, I find that frustrating. But’ I’ve thought, well, OK, if I can’t work full-time I’ll do stuff that interests me. So I do independent work as a clinical nurse specialist. I’ve worked in a’ recently in a psychosexual clinic, which was very interesting. I was having hypnotherapy at one point. And I thought, ooh, this could be useful. And at the same point in time my hypnotherapist said to me, ‘I think you’d make a good hypnotherapist. Would you like a scholarship? I think I can arrange it. So I now do hypnotherapy. I’m a qualified hypnotherapist. So the spare time that I’ve got through not working, I’ve actually put to fairly good use. I decided’ I, I helped to set up a hydrotherapy unit. And I was working in a hydrotherapy unit. And that has now closed, unfortunately. But I decided to formalise the massage experience I got. So I did a massage diploma. So I’m now a qualified masseur as well.

And when I’d seen an HIV consultant for the time hed said to me looking at your immune profile I wouldn’t expect you to get in the least bit sick for five years. And I can remember saying, thinking it’s only three years, this is wrong, it’s not fair, it’s only three years, it’s only three years. So anyway, after two weeks I was discharged with TB and you know, which again I thought’ I remember these jokes I made about it, I actually made light of it, oh I’ve got to write a great novel now, I’ve got consumption you know. And because I was historically minded, you know oh God, you know, as long as I had consumption rather than TB you know. But I thought it was quite a glamorous AIDS defining illness to have, and it was also an AIDS defining illness as well. And that was another’ you know it was this kind of thing that I thought that means that I’m’ well I know it sounds, again it’s, it was such a’ it means all my benefits are secure and things like that you know. And theres nothing, you know, my little world is walled off now. It’s almost like a trigger for the next set of you know’ OK it’s got its bad implications but I sort of found these things that could go with it you know’

And then when I got the (Aids) diagnosis I thought okay I have spent these last three years learning how to live with something that is life threatening. And how to have a good life and I had, I had a fantastic, you know they had been the best three years of my life ironically.

And why was that?

Because I lived I was so present in my life.

What do you mean by present?

Well when I was at college, and I was drinking and clubbing and having fantastic fun, the focus of my attention was going out getting drunk and dancing all night. That was where my attention was’ Secondary to that was trying to get a bit of study done so that I could finish my degree. No concept about what I was going to do with that, or why I was really doing it, because it was just what was done. College was what you did after you finished school for me. Whereas once I’d stopped drinking, and I’d made a few decisions when I’ve stopped drinking that all of the money I used to spend on my cigarettes and on my drink would be put towards things that I wanted for myself, whether it was holidays, theatre, opera, cinema, galleries anything that inspired me and made me feel good and enriched my life. That was what all of that money was going to do for me now. And that is how I lived my life, on a daily basis that you know everything was for my advancement, everything was for my enrichment, that really you know’ if I was going to have a good quality of life for what ever time I had, it had to be done there and then. And you know I can recommend it as the best way to live, with responsibility, not thinking that this could be the last day I live, but to think of well if it was, how would I want today to be for me. I would want to be productive, I would want it to be enriching, I would want it to be happy. So what is the point in living through a crappy day that gives you nothing, that only gives nothing to anybody. There is no point in that’ it is a waste.

If you’re so busy wondering about the next pair of new shoes, well, enjoy the ones you’re wearing now. Yes by all means think about who you are going to send Christmas cards to. Or who you are not going to send Christmas cards to. But only actually worry about it when you’re doing the writing. Plan next January’s holiday by all means. But enjoy the planning, because now is the time you’re doing it. The holiday might never arrive!