Over Memorial Day Weekend I found out a friend of mine had passed away. This was a seemingly healthy, 36 year old man. When I called one of our mutual friends to get more details she said that an autopsy had been performed, yet they hadnt discovered the cause of death. Suicide and foul play had been ruled out. I kept replaying this situation in my head over and over again.
On Wednesday I received a call from my friend to say she had some more information. Turns out our friend had HIV. He hadnt told a soul. Not his parents, not his best friends, and not the women he dated. He did for a fact know about his illness and was treating it. It was something nobody knew he was struggling with.
While I mourn the death of my friend, I am also very angry that somebody I thought was a very nice, moral, and honest person could withhold something as important as that from the women he dated. He is entitled to his privacy, but at the same time he has essentially put many women in possible danger without even giving them the opportunity to decide if that was a risk they wanted to take. I find that disgusting, and of the lowest character imaginable.
Now the job of his best friend is to put on hold his mourning, and to call all the women he knows his friend fucked and reveal to them that he was HIV positive and to get tested.
While being honest may seem too tough to handle, it’s the only way to be. It saddens me that this is the final thought I am left with about my departed friend.
The fear of dying alone was scarier than the fear of death itself. Although it was the ultimate selfish act not to tell these women he was endangering their lives, it goes to show how deep the human fear of loneliness goes. I hope his lasting legacy in this world isn’t condemning women to the same fate as his own.
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