AIDS

So this is what the late bereavement therapist Judy Pollatsek meant when she trained Whitman-Walker's AIDS "buddies" in the 1980s, volunteers who provide care and support to very ill people with HIV-AIDS. Judy, whom I interviewed several times, used to say that for people with the illness, "grief begins at diagnosis." I had grieved for many others, but I had no idea how to grieve for myself.

I shared my news with close friends, who affirmed the view that HIV should not define me. But the thought of telling my family, particularly my beloved mother, tore me up inside. I felt as though I had let her down in some way.

I have been open with my family for years about being gay, and they have always loved and accepted me. But I am the only son, the oldest child, my two sisters' big brother, my mother's Rock of Gibraltar. Since my father's death in 1989, I have felt I had to be the paterfamilias, always strong for others. I never learned that it's okay to admit that I'm frightened or that I need to be loved. I think this is the biggest reason why I was able to be detached and clinical for so long in reporting on a subject as painful as HIV-AIDS, even as it broke my heart repeatedly.

And so I kept my secret from my family for months, acting as though I believed that having HIV was something shameful. Which of course I have never believed.

Looking at life through the eyes of an HIV-positive man, I'm seeing things in a new way. Now I know what the late Bob Edwards meant when I interviewed him for "The Survivors," my 1986 City Paper cover story about men whose partners with AIDS had died. Bob, who led a group of buddies for Whitman-Walker, told me how grief had made him more conscious of his own and others' feelings.

"You know what things mean," he said. "You have a real understanding of love, of things that will discourage and hurt you, of goodness and kindness -- and the antithesis of those things. You don't tolerate people who say things like 'Oh, get over it.' "

I now feel a sense of healing within myself, as if living with HIV has helped me finally know that I'm loved and cared for. I'm learning to be present to my own suffering, and not to detach from my sadness.

When I finally shared my news with my mother in early April, she said to me, "Be brave, John." I've learned that brave people -- like the many I have known and interviewed -- are not without fear, but they do the right thing despite their fear. I'm able to be brave, and tell my story, because I have the love and support of family and friends.

I know too well that even 25 years into the HIV-AIDS pandemic, such openness can get a person killed in some parts of the world. And I know there are gay men in this country who will resist believing that my story could ever become their own.

I, too, resisted believing that the stories I reported would ever become my story. I told myself I was smart, cautious, perhaps even "spared" so I could bear witness as a reporter. But my perspective has changed. Now I understand what I've seen and heard from others. And I can only try to make those without firsthand experience understand -- not by writing as a detached observer, but by writing straight from the heart.

John-Manuel Andriote is the author of "Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America" (University of Chicago Press).