Coping

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“No matter the difficulty of the situation in which you may find yourself, practicing gratitude will help you find a way out”

Anonymous

How do you cope with herpes? How do you find gratitude?

It’s been eleven months since I was abroad hearing the sentence “You have herpes” from a doctor who ushered me out of the room without any consolation or medical explanation, so I’ll give myself some grace for admitting that I still haven’t processed what happened almost a year ago…

The Diagnosis

I went to the university health center and the doctor didn’t even need to a lab result to tell me I had it. I thought she’d at least tell me what my diagnosis meant, but she only told me two things that visit. First, that I contracted HSV-1 from a cold sore and second, I’d have it for life.

What Stumps Me the Most

What stumps me the most is that I was in a committed monogamous relationship. Condom or no condom, it wouldn’t have made a difference. He gets to live his life as he did and mine completely changed. He gets cold sores. I have genital herpes. And somehow, even though it’s the same thing, both HSV-1, he’ll be just fine.

  • What did this mean?
  • Am I going to be okay?
  • How do I tell someone?
  • When do I tell someone?
  • Will I ever be loved?
  • Will any guy be okay with this?
  • Will I ever be okay with this?
  • How do I process it?
  • How do I cope?
The Truth

Truth is I have herpes. I’ll have it for the rest of my life. I have to deal with it and I have to cope with it. I can’t change what’s happened and I need to stop wishing I could. Some days I tell myself “it is what it is” and other days all I can do is cry. I can’t blame him, and I can’t blame myself. The stigma of HSV on my well-being has been one of the hardest parts. I used to say all the same shitty things about people with herpes. I used to think that girls that had it were trashy, dirty, irresponsible… I used to wonder who would ever be with someone that had it. Here I was, on the other side of every remark, judgement, and assumption. I will never have a normal dating life again. We don’t often think about sexual freedom. I certainly didn’t until it was taken away and I no longer had it.

Coping

There’s an app for people with HSV and space for them to ask anonymous questions. Someone asked:

“How do I come to terms with my genital herpes diagnosis? I feel completely hopeless that I can ever find love, to the point I’m nearly suicidal”

So I replied..

“I felt the same way. I still don’t know how to process it and deal with it, but I can say that having someone who knows you, loves you, and gets you has helped me so much. I struggled with the fact that I was dealing with it alone and didn’t want to tell anyone ever. Let alone a potential partner!! It’s been a year since my diagnosis and I still think about it every day and it does affect my day-to-day life, but, being able to talk about it with my best friend when I need to has helped me so much. Trying to find peace with it is hard, talking about it is hard, but if you have someone- tell them. Our lives aren’t over, we’ll find someone who’ll love us. We’re still worthy of love and are the same person we were before our diagnosis. It’s not easy, but you’ll be okay.”

And I realized,

I’m not alone in this. I will be okay.

It took eight months and meeting someone for me to realize I needed to start processing my time abroad and find peace with my diagnosis. I wish I could’ve met this person earlier, but I think he came into my life exactly when he was supposed to. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance, though I truly hope I do, to tell him thank you. For the short time we had, he made me excited and hopeful for the future. Because of him, I feel like I’m capable of love and being loved one day. Shortly after meeting him, I moved across the country and decided it was time I change, put in the work, and figure out how to love myself again. I didn’t tell him about my diagnosis but I want to heal enough so that one day I can- even if that means he walks away. Since moving, I made a friend who’s helped me more than she’ll probably ever know. She listens, cares… and encouraged me to start this blog. Whatever it may be that you’re going through, if I have any advice at all, it’d be that the worst thing you can do is take it on by yourself. I kept quiet and figured I’d grow on my own- I only lost myself more. We aren’t supposed to heal alone, and we aren’t meant to figure it all out by ourselves. In the last few weeks, I’ve come to see that it is entirely possible to practice gratitude in our most difficult of times- it starts with thanking those who never stopped loving us, even when we stopped loving ourselves.

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