A month and some ago, Rhodes ran an hiv aids awareness
campaign on campus. With this they hollered and tooted all across the streets
on the importance of why one should be in tune with their health. They offered
tests in types and all rounded wellness advice...these people spoil us, I love
it here!
Any who, I wont go any further before I explain why it is
that I chose to write the oh so terrifying hiv or aids 'un-caps lock-ed'. A few
years ago, in 2008 I was reading books, as had always been the case since the
days when daddy started to shove literature into my life. So this habit of
reading stuck with me for life and I am forever grateful to him for instilling
the love for literature in me from that delicate age. It has become one of the
best companions I could have ever wished for.
Let my digress-full self get back on topic. In 2008, I was
no longer reading the cinderella or puss 'n boots or the rapunzel's that daddy
had filled my mini bookshelf with. Nah, in 2008 I was reading grown folk books,
you know, the type that wake the third eye up, spin your entire psyche around
and get you thinking about life and all its offerings in ways you never thought
you were capable of. Yes, that’s what I was reading in my confused state of
eighteen years old.
I met someone I now consider my best friend in my first year
of varsity, at sixteen. I hate the term 'best friend' trust me, the passion
with which I absolutely despise this term is too untamed to fit these pages.
Labelling friends and my relationships with them has never been a practice of
me and so I only use this term 'best friend' loosely, to describe just how
highly I take the big-sister-I never-had relationship I have with this daughter
of the soil and to add to that, how "bestly" her presence in my life
has molded me into who I am today.
But that’s not where I am right now, I am in 2008 and I am
reading books. And amongst these books I happened to stumble upon a few by
motivational speaker and author Louise L.
Hay. Let me explain how in the world I came to cross ways with Miss Hay...I
am going to have to bring in my big sister I never had once more, she is an
inspiration fiend and is a sucker for this motivational type of writing. For
two years straight she had been trying to get the bug to bite me but I never
pitched, I did not have the time to show up to a self-help book feast when I
was too busy checking out Gwendyln
D. Pough's 'Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture,
and the Public Sphere'
I now realize that it has taken me three whole paragraphs to
explain why I refuse to hit the caps lock on hiv or aids, but I guess thats the
ugly of writing, one needs to paint contexts into discussions. The reason I
have gone against the standard rule grain is because of Louise. L Hay. She
wrote in one of her books, one which the title has now escaped me that she does
not give aids or hiv the satisfaction. She went on to explain how we as global
citizens have shown all respect to a deficiency or virus that has wiped out
billions of our own by deciding to honor it with capitalizing its every letter
in the way that we do only the first letters in peoples names. We don't even
caps lock our full names yet here we are giving this aids guy all the glory!
Anyway, back to where my story begins, out of curiosity of
my body and what its been getting up to, I went for a pap smear test that
would have usually cost a small fee but was free in that campaign week. I went
in there with the gut of a captain and came out feeling pretty good about myself.
Fast forward some six weeks later and here I am....trembling at the knees as I
drag myself back for the results. I'm pretty sure I have tried at being a good
girl and to some measure, have succeeded so I should be clean, yet words like
herpes, yeast infection and other similarly ugly terms float endlessly at the
back of my mind.
The end to this long story is that I finally did the right
thing. I have been postponing picking up my results for weeks now, for fear of
the unknown and today I had finally had it with myself so I grabbed me by
the roots of these locks and I dragged myself to that healthcare centre, pulled
a 'bravery' on myself and asked for my pap smear results. And just like I
thought, all that freaking out was for nothing, but when the possibilities seem
more factual than the reality itself, then like Houston, we got a problem.
I did the right thing by being inquisitive about the state
of my health and deciding to take that pap smear then I almost fell out on
sequel-ling that by collecting my results. I'm learning on doing good and
following that good right through to the end… completion of good deeds make me
feel good, it’s a whole chain reaction of goodness...
With all that said, lets all learn to do like a Spike Lee
joint.
Until next post,
Africa Rising, Peace & Revolution
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