Tea began as medicine and morphed into a beverage of choice!
I don't quite remember when I fell in love with tea but I do remember the most 
Until recently I had never drank Peppermint Tea made with loose leaves. And Honestly, I will probably never go back. The freshness of loose Peppermint Tea cannot be denied. When I open the can of 
I love to read! Inside a book I escape into someone else's life. There is something wonderful about turning to the next page of a wonderful story. Something intoxicating about the smell of the book and the story it brings to life. Reading brings me joy, and these days with my health in the balance, I find solace in my books.
Often times the holidays seems to compound the loneliness and isolation of a single person living with HIV. I know for me this has been the case. No doubt dating with a sexually transmitted disease is hard: The having to disclose; having to explain the how I got to this place; The fear of judgement and rejection. The shame with acknowledging your choices and for some even your culpability in your infection; the self loathing that comes with why you chose to trust the very person that infected you, whether it is HIV or herpes.
Out if my own loneliness and isolation I've been thinking about dating a lot as of lately. People think being this famous woman with AIDS means that I'm not lonely, but at the end of the day I still come home to myself. I have no one to wind down my day, even if with just a phone call. I give so much to help enrich the lives of others but get very little to enrich my own life. This is my situation living with this disease. In my last blog about dating I talked about men willing to date me in private but not public and my decision to shut that down out of self respect and love for myself.
Just recently I told a man after our initial conversation that I had drug resistant herpes. Let me tell you, I didn't exhale until he said, "I read that in one of your blogs," and we went on to the next topic. I like this guy, so we will see where it leads. *giggles* To his testament he didn't drill me on how the hell I ended up with two sexually transmitted diseases. There were no judgments or backtracking on his part. But in those first 60 seconds my mind raced pass the conversation to my own fears. What will he think of me with both HIV and herpes? Will having two diseases be a deal breaker? Even that self-loathing became a part of my mental drama. As I was rambling on about my herpes I was thinking, "Girl how did you end up here?" But at the end of the day you can't change the course of history, all you can do is accept your journey for what it is and try to be your best you with what you got.
I got to tell you, I see them as an easy way to get pass that first level of fear; rejection. You don't have to have that initial conversation because the person reaching out to you already knows your baseline. Now I've got to be honest, a while back, like 7-8 years ago, I did a free trial weekend for one of those poplar dating sites that advertise on tv, but based on what I said to the guy, he Googled me and that was a deal breaker *shrugs* his loss, because I'm a wonderful woman.
But what I know for sure about the dating sites is that the person reaching out will at least know your base-line when they send that first email. I think a dating site like this could be a way to get the conversation going and sometimes all you need is an open door. So what the heck, you really have nothing to lose but time. For sure you should work within the parameters of the site and be honest. I mean no point lying on a site where everyone has a sexually transmitted disease. I think it's a level of freedom actually, everyone is at the same starting point.
Think about it this way, you know right off bat that you are not being rejected because of your status. With your status out of the way, you can now go forth and see if there is compatibility. Now let me be honest, everyone with HIV is not going to be a perfect match, sometimes you gotta work through the barrel to find that right apple.
