This chapter is about how to live with this disease and stay in one piece.
It is about how to face uncertainty and still preserve emotional health. Preserving emotional health in the face of HIV infection is heroic, and people do it all the time, using all sorts of tricks.
The tricks allow people to function in their daily lives, to endure uncertainty, to choose how to live, and to find real satisfaction and pleasure in the process.A great variety of such tricks are successful. People use different tricks at different times, depending on their needs. Many of the tricks even seem to contradict one another: sometimes people need to confront what the disease might bring; other times they need to take a break from that. Some tricks might work for you; some you might need to modify. You will almost certainly make up new ones for yourself.
Some tricks come from mental health professionals, though these professionals have no firm rules for maintaining emotional wholeness. Most tricks come from the rich imaginations and enormous inner resources of the people affected by HIV infection.
These people are proud of their toughness and resourcefulness, and so they should be. Steven Charles said, “I have to deal with this whether I want to or not. Six or seven years have gone by since I was diagnosed with the virus. How have I come through it? I think I’ve come through it admirably.” Neither Steven nor anyone else feels they have been admirable every minute: “It’s hard to do seven days a week,” he says. But on the whole, everyone who uses these tricks says that life is better.
The tricks seem to fall into two broad categories. The first is: use your sources of support. The second is: as far as you are able, take control of your life.