This from the Internet. I get a LOT of missives. The thought is nice. Even if it’s wrong. As mammals, we frequently reduce life down to its most simplistic and elemental terms. Most of us have no time on any given day to be more complex than a slogan provides for. Just give me the slogan, and I’ll be on my way.

I’m just not that strong.

I’m dying. Get real.

The adolescent boys at-risk that I work with have decided to stop taking their HIV meds.

Not because they have a problem with the antiretrovirals. The problems go deeper than that, and they have to do with the system that dispenses the drugs. The medical system is invasive. Especially to boys who are sexual abuse survivors. There is no time to have a life in this. The medical demands insist that a majority of their time being alive must be spent seeing doctors. The system is replete with a retribution exacted as a hatred that condemns stigma on one side of its mouth while imposing punishment inflicted on kids with HIV as vengeance with the other side of its mouth and the whole thing snarls like a nocturnal cat.

I am tired of the vengeance. I am tired of the hypocrisy. I am tired of public health waiting rooms. I am tired of insurance companies who wish I would shut the fuck up and die while rejecting any claims whatsoever. I am tired of the constant and unnecessary examinations. I am tired of fighting for the meds at every governmental level. I am tired of being thrown out of offices. I am tired of a system that insists it practices confidentiality, but wants a photo ID at the door demanded by cops with guns. I am tired of professionals who refuse to believe I was abused, beaten, fucked in the ass. Raped. I am tired of having to drive a hundred miles to the nearest public health clinic because absolutely no doctor in my community will so much as see me.

I am tired of the invisibility. I am tired of turning to prostitution to buy food. I am tired of invective. I am tired of a public health pharmacy that frequently has no drugs that you are supposed to take every day. “Come back another time.” I am not driving a hundred miles one-way to come back another time.

I stand in solidarity with the boys. Let death come. We are tired.

There seems to be some kind of disingenuous agreement that the system works so well we can run ID’s through it as we sift for outstanding warrants. There is no confidentiality to be had. There is no medication to be had this week (then, what am I doing here). There is no empathy to be had. There is no end to the examinations to be had. There are no more food stamps to be had. There are no insurance claims to be had. There is no understanding of time. It can take the entire day to be seen. There is no job that can accommodate this. There are no schools that can accommodate this. The system is a vacuum, and you will be sucked into it.

All the while we are all being told that HIV is manageable.

The system is unmanageable. It is designed to punish.

Criticism of the HIV system is not tolerated by AIDS orgs. You will be ignored and marginalized by people who know better.

People who lie to the newly diagnosed and the potential candidates for testing who are told everything works. Everything works until you get sick.

It doesn’t matter who understands you. What matters is that you are sick.

We are sick and tired of how it works because it does not work. The HIV system will chew you up and spit you out. You are reduced to garbage.

And we are tired of it.

https://tim-barrus.format.com/about