राम

Last night an ex-boyfriend/non-romantic-friend-beyond-category visiting from New York invited me to a dinner he was invited to by an epidemiologist and his wife. The epidemiologist invited me to a secret meeting I believe will re-inspire me to AIDS work of some kind. The meeting is to happen sometime in the spring. I'm supposed to come up with a bio to email to the host. I'm planning to assemble my history by Tuesday, giving me the weekday tomorrow to verify dates. I needed to create an explanation of myself in the form of a statement of purpose for my application to the school I am in the process of applying to anyway.

On explaining myself: I understand that psychological patterns have kinds of inertia and repetition, but that is not enough to explain why I have survived this long. I am not superstitious, or fundamentalistic. But I don't understand how my life could be as expensive as it is, why it is paid for, and why I have met (and apparently still meet) very powerfully skillful people in AIDS work, if there weren't to be some purpose to my existence besides unsought, no-longer-relevant-anyway demographic representation. (White, straight, non-non-prescription-drug-using woman.) Demographics are essential to prevention, but demographics can not cover the spectrum of living, breathing individual human bodies that HIV inhabits and takes over. I would think that is what it is that I'm here to say - except that that understanding seems to have no resonance with anybody else. So what do I do with it?

There is a new rush and urgency to my life I haven't felt in a long time. I go through long periods of giving up - years - of semi-isolation - two or three people in my life knowing what is going on with me (to the point that that is possible), only one I see regularly.

And then everything happens at once.