The one she has

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She started noticing the little changes in her skin. Saturday morning, she hit me up saying she wanted to loop me in on the progress.

“Do you know that when you have it, your skin becomes dry?”

Confused, I asked her what it.

“You know, the one I have,” she said.

It was only a few months ago when she messaged me after a long time without contact. She said at first, it was just fatigue. Then the tests, the waiting, the sterile sound of the hospital. When the test came back positive, the word hung like a paused breath. It felt like that, too, when she told me about it.

She told me about her monthly visits. About the thin curtain that separated her from the rest of the patients. About how on earth the hospital thinks a thin curtain could protect her from the judgments. I imagined her walking home in silence each time, with the city loud and distant, with the weight of something settling under her skin.

We tried to comfort ourselves with the fact that it is no longer incurable. While there is no complete cure for it, modern antiretroviral therapy has turned it into a manageable chronic condition. The virus can be suppressed to undetectable levels. Once it reaches this point, it becomes untransmittable.

In her case, it might not even take a year to reach that level if she remains consistent with her medication. But just because the process is short does not mean the agony feels any less tormenting.

The dimming started to sink in. Her skin turned dull, her lips cracked, her cheek hollowed a little. The glow slowly left her. One patch of dry skin at a time.

I asked her if that was normal. She said it can do that.

I thought about how, when our immunity slows down, our body prioritizes survival. How beauty becomes an afterthought. Knowing her, I could only imagine how it felt.

How does it feel to witness yourself slowly eroding? To, little by little, lose the parts of yourself you loved so well into the cracks created by a virus?

I guess no one really tells you how strange it feels to grieve yourself while you are still alive.