it was the year of 1993; i was 23yrs old. i remember it like it just happened. i left texas to get away from abusive boyfriend. we had been together for 7 year; we had two great kids together. so i move to new york to be closer to my family; my mom was there, my sister, her kids,and my brother. i had been in new york for a year when i meet this guy. in my mind, he was everything i ever wanted.so he moved in with me . then,one day, out of the blue, his so-called wifeshowed up. i overlooked it because they had kidstogether. At that time i didn't know he was still married to her-and still sleeping with her. Until the day he had to go to Virginia. He called me the very next day to ask me if i wanted to come to virginia with him.so i went. We were there for a few days and then went back to new york. when we got back, we sat down and talked about moving to Virginia. Two weeks to the day we moved. We had been in Virginia for about a month but when we got there we moved in with his so-called ex-wife. (i want you to know i really fell for this guy-he promised me the moon and the stars. Now what girl wouldn't go for that?) like i said, at the i still didn't know they were still married. I just thought she was letting us stay there because we needed to find a place. Well,i found out in the end it was all set up like that:he wanted his cake and eat it too. When i found out what he was really up to ,i tried so hard to get out but i could never get away from him.
And that is when it al started--that's when i started hearing she was hiv-positive and i thought, she just wanted me to hear that so i wouldn't have my tubes untied. I went crazy because i really didn't know much about the disease i did know i could die from it but that's all i knew about that stuff. But one night she walked up to me and said kelli ,l'm hiv-positive. l didn't know what to think at first--i thought it was just a joke .l kept asking if he had it too. They both told me, no.
; guess i just wanted to believe that he couldn't have it.a week after they first told me he wasn't positive, l went to get tested anyway because i just couldn't see how i couldn't have it too. The first test came back negative but at that time in the back of my mind,i knew i was going to be positive. When he found out i went to get tested, he blew up. He was so mad--kept asking me, what,you don't believe what i'm telling you? i said, with something like this, no. (there are a lot of people out there who won't tell you!) l guess when he started like he was telling the truth, i wanted so bad to believe him because that was how much i loved him. lmean, i was going to marry this guy. i wanted to believe so muchthat he wouldn't do that to me.

So i went backand got tested again, and that one came back negative like the first one. l kept asking him if he had it,too, but he'd tell me,no.i don't have it, don't you believe me? But i just couldn't grt it out of my head. We started fighting about it,and i packed my stuff and went back to New York.
My mom got he doctor to see me and do some more test and it took two weeks to get them back, but i didn't stay around to get the results back; i let him talk me into going back to him. So when the two weeks were up, i started getting letters from the doctor, telling me i needed to get in touch with him because he had my results back. Well, i knew then what they were going to be so a month later, i left him again and went back to my moms. l went to see the doctor, but i knew before he even said anything . I was okay until he told me what i already knew.and when he told me, that's when it became really real and i just lost it. All i could think was, l'm going to die and what was going to happen to my kids this is where it get's really hard for me.

But first i just want to say i really didn't have much of a childhood ,i was raped at the age of 13, and that went on for three years and after that i really didn't feel good about myself, i had a baby at 17 moved in with her father when she was 5 months old and i was with him for seven years,and i let him beat on me;(because i loved him so much) i never did anything about that. i guess i thought at the time i didn't want to lose him becasue i loved him, but that was the first bad thing i let someione do to me, life isn't always easy but for a kid my age -- i shouldn't have had to go through all that, i went home to my moms; my sister was there, too. One day, i was in my moms bedroom trying to get the window up, and it fell on my hand. i was bleeding really bad, and i was pushing her away, telling her not to touch me, and my sister was in the back ground yelling at her not to touch me because she could get it too, but my mom told here that i needed her, and she was going to help me, and my sister got raelly upset and walked out and after that we didn't talk for three years. But that wasn't the only reason she wouldn't talk to me. About three months after i found out that i was hiv-poz, my mom died and i didn't go to the wake i couldn't bring myself to see my mom like that-- two weeks before she passed away she had been at my house joking and playing around. I didn't want to see her like that i wanted to remember her the way she was. I was really bad on drugs, i was so bad i didn't know if i was coming or going. I know now that it shouldn‚t of stoped me,but i was so bad i just couldn‚t do it. I had sent my kids back to texas to live with their faters mom because i didn‚t want my kids to see what there mom was going through at the time, and that was 13 years ago,and they are still there now. I know my sister was only tring to help the girl‚s but she hurt me because she wrote a note to help their grandma take them away from me, and the bad thing about that was that she didn't have to do that because i wasn't going to het them and bring them back into the life i was living. But in 1994, i went to jail for a year and six months and i didn't even know she was going to court to take them away for good until i got out,and then it was to late. I have forgiven her for that because i know she was looking out for my kids.it took a long time before i was able to see them but after i was out of jail for three year‚s,she finely let me see them.before i moved to virginia this time,my oldest one lived with me for two years, and now i talk to them on the phone all the time. But it was a hard road to go down, and then having to deal with being hiv positvie-- what a life!
When i first found out and called my boyfriend to tell him what the test said, he asked me, who i was sleeping with because i didn't get it from him. But i know down deep that he was the one who gave it to me.i did go back to him because, at the time, i really didn't think anyone would want to be with me, having the virus and all. I found out later down the road that he did have it, had had it for 15 years before i met him and to think, if his ex-wife hadn't said anything to me, i would have gotten my tubes untied, and had a baby with him. He already had three kids who had the virus-- i just don't think i would've been able to handle it if i had found out after the fact. It has been a long 13 years, but i don't think like i use to, i know that i can live a very healthy life. I can live until i'm a 100 years old, and that is my goal.

I'm writing this story in the hopes that some teenage kid might come across it, and it'll make them stop and think about what they are doing to their live's. Now i live a good life-- i live with my sister because last year my hep-c started messing with my liver. So now l'm taking meds for that, but never had to take meds for my hiv. My doctors don't understand how this is happening, but i really don't care how, just as long as it keeps working that way. Sometimes it is hard to forgive someone for what they have done to you, and what was done to me was wrong. He took my life in his hands without even thinking about me or my kids, but i have forgiven him, but it took a long time before i could, and i still call him names sometimes because i do have bad days,and every time something else goes wrong, i call him every name in the book. It hurts so bad to know that someone who says they love you can do something like this to you. But it hurts even more to know that it just wasn't me he did this to-- he hurt my whole family and my kids too.
Well, i hope someone can get something out of this, and it'll make someone stop and think twice. Because if you can take something as bad as this, and make it into something, then it was wroth writing this story.

the end! By: kelli

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Sent via Email February 25, 2006 from New York, USA.