BEING HIV POSITIVE MADE ME LIVE IN DENIAL FOR 7 YEARS AND HOPED DEATH WAS A SOLUTION
27 YEAR OLD ZAMBIAN LADY WHO HAS LIVED 13 YEARS HIV POSTIVE EXPRESSES HOW HARD ACCEPTING BEING POSTIVE COSTED HER MENTAL HEALTH.
Acceptance is great freedom to a better life” Precious Mwewa Kaniki.
27 year old Precious Mwewa Kaniki is young vibrant lady who has been HIV positive for 13 years, during an interview with Girl Empowerment Alliance for change she narrates “Living with HIV for 13 years has taught me that acceptance is gradual and it’s okay to take it easy on yourself. The important thing is how you deal with the down moments when you feel like you can’t take it anymore or that being HIV positive has caused alot of stand still and can’t really progress in life or anything.
For 7 years I lived in denial and nothing made sense to me as working hard at school, building uplifting friendships/relationship with everyone around me was a challenge that I withdraw from everything and everyone as I kept hoping death will remove all the sadness, unhappy fake smiles I showed to the people which wasn’t the case.
All those feelings made me to take my drugs when I felt like, when my conscience troubled me or when I got sick. Having drugs resistance and eventually treatment failure made things worse because by then in 2010 I was changed drugs as I was to take more than 8 tablets every single day and that was really depressing. Not only that, rejection by guys and the thought of transmitting HIV to loved ones was very unbearable leading to having Low self-esteem and self stigma.
In 2014 I became very sick, I remember weighing 38kg for years I and this time I bargained with my life to stay alive. Being sick that year in a shortest time made me realized I needed to accept my status as I wasn’t dying so I needed to be strong for me and live for me.
5 years since coming out public with my status has made me realize I was very hard on myself because sometimes feelings of being a failure persisted and in the process I wasted 7 years of my good health and in time it finally hit me so hard that it felt very over whelming and I felt I couldn’t handle it all plus the psychological growing and all. But over the years I have come to acknowledge that healing is gradual and it’s okay to break down from time to time because that’s life what’s important is how you bounce back from your low moments and how you cope with negative thoughts if they came around. For me talking to young people living with HIV always reminds me that am not alone and that there is someone like me out there having similar challenges I faced. People thinking going for therapy is shameful and society will look down on them. I go for therapy when I get overwhelmed and I always remind myself from where I am coming from and the self confidence I have built over the years the self stigma I have shaken off and the thought of knowing that someone somewhere out there might waste 7 years of their life and more remind me to always being true to myself and share when I can that the most important thing is how you live your positive life and it really doesn’t matter if one got it through rape, mother to child or sexual intercourse.
Knowing I am now Undetectable and that I can’t transmit HIV to anyone has been the lifting thing I have come to know and everyone on treatment should know that.
My life
My health
My responsibility
Mental health matters to everyone hence let’s normalize talking about to prevent Sucide.
