How was it with me? – wonders Małgorzata. Before I picked up my test results, I knew it must be wrong. Because if Piotr was infected, how could I avoid it?
Małgorzata Meler is an attractive woman. In spring she lost 10 kg. The fruit and vegetable diet helped her regain her figure and improved her well-being, and in this disease it is essential. As in any chronic disease that the body has to deal with on a daily basis.
It started with Piotr
She was a long-awaited child. Single girl, no teenage rebellions, with parents who earn good money in managerial positions. She was going to become a doctor. But she didn’t stay. She failed her exams for medical studies in Poznań once and twice, and finally went to a rehabilitation school, then for midwives. – I had a lot of work – recalls Małgosia. – A dozen or so children were born during one shift, and it would be wonderful if it were not for this pain. It was the maternity ward that cured me of my maternal instinct, I saw the suffering of women and told myself about it, thank you, I will not give birth.
At that time, Małgorzata met Piotr. She was friends with his sister and somehow it started to grow between them. He lived the life of an artist, he did not work, but he published poems about passing, loneliness and death in literary magazines. She was 23 at the time, her own grandmother’s apartment, and he had long blonde hair with a fluffy mane, full lips and sad eyes.
Drinking, beating and testing
– These three years with Piotr changed my life. For worse. Although at the beginning I was in love and somehow happy there – says Małgorzata. Piotr introduced her to the artistic world, but it soon turned out that the man was not so sweet. One day he hit her. Then it happened more and more often. Małgosia was ashamed and slowly moved away from her family, friends and colleagues. She was so involved in relations with her beloved that in the end she was left alone, relying only on him and her fear. After another sleepless night and his threats to set fire to her parents’ plot, she decided to leave. But she did not leave. In the morning, Piotr said that he had done an HIV test, he was infected, so it was best for her to do it too. – I was scared, but I did not have the courage to go to the research – Małgorzata lowers her head and continues the story. – It may be strange, but I immediately resigned from work. I was afraid that if it miraculously revealed that I was infected too, they would lynch me in the delivery room.
She moved to the clinic. She went to work, but she seemed to collapse into herself. She was constantly thinking about HIV. She finally did the tests. She waited for the result for three months, that was how long it took then. She started drinking. Or rather, they drank with Peter. Even the hitting didn’t bother her that much anymore. She didn’t experience the shock of realizing she was infected. A few weeks earlier, she had learned that Piotr was not faithful to her. It is not surprising that the taboos of girls chased after him. But he didn’t stop at just having sex with women. He also had intercourse with men.
A steep slope
A positive HIV test result did not mean that Małgorzata was ill. It meant death. She began to drink more and drink more often.
She was fired from her job. Then Piotr asked the doctor who was receiving treatment if his partner would not be employed in the clinic, she was a nurse. This is how she ended up in an infectious diseases hospital.
– I no longer had my life ahead of me, but I kept to my parents, in the end I was still their beloved daughter – says Małgosia. – I learned to laugh with my eyes, exercised my gaze before entering their house and crossed the threshold with my face lit up. Always alone, I never introduced Piotr to them – she says.
Her world at that time was the world from under the beer booth. She would go to work on a kick, but she clung to it. She knew she couldn’t lose her job. She drank in the evenings. In order not to think. Because what is there to think about when the life of a twenty-something-year-old girl is about to end. When nothing is waiting for her anymore. When…
And then Piotr dumped her. Overnight he packed up and left. She never saw him again.
Did she tell day from night then? Everything started to blur. She was fired from her job again.
Everything from the beginning
Piotr has been gone for a long time, and Małgosia has not been sober. Once, she bought an expensive cognac and decided to die.
She didn’t think she was going to hurt anyone, much less herself. She had no illusions about what someone living with HIV could count on. Better to hasten death.
– After 24 hours I woke up with my head in pills scattered on the pillow – recalls Małgorzata. “I made a mistake because first I drank the cognac, then I just took a few sleeping pills and… fell asleep. But this mistake saved my life. I said out loud to myself: oh no, it won’t be like that, we’re alive!
It was like a resurrection after three years. Małgorzata asked for help for the first time. She stood in front of her parents and said she wanted to be treated.
For some time she was in the hospital in Świecie, then in the monastery in Rywałd Królewski at therapeutic meetings for anonymous alcoholics. She began to rebuild her world. She sold her apartment and moved to a completely different part of the city, so that nothing would remind her of the path she had followed until recently.
Despite the disease
Małgosia also changed her profession. It took her many years. One studies, then another, and a lot of completed courses, received certificates. Sometimes he hears: Oh, you work with pathology! Because he is a therapist and helps people addicted to addictions. He also sits by the helpline and listens, advises and sympathizes. He knows a lot now. After all, for years she had been looking for the answer to the simplest question. And she was looking for the meaning of everything that happened to her. For her, HIV first became the end of life and then the beginning. The virus began to define the framework in which she could plan her day.
– It once seemed to me that there was no future ahead of me, and yet I am still in this world – emphasizes Małgorzata. – I am over 50, half of which live with the disease. It turns out that it is not so easy and fast to die of HIV. And yet, when I was handed a positive test result, I heard that I have no more than 10 years.
The first five years Małgorzata fell and rose. In the end, she ended up in Lambda, an association for gays and lesbians, then she went to Marek Kotański to hire her at the Monarow clinic. Back then, only such environments wanted her.
In the early 90s, she went to a conference in Germany and the Netherlands. There she heard for the first time about HIV drugs and female condoms. She saw people discussing and having fun despite their illness. She decided that she had to create something like that in Poland. I think she coped with what happened to her. And there is no claim to Peter.
She was going through a period of deep faith in God when a friend borrowed her a forgiveness tape. – I realized that I did not want to waste my time on anger and hatred, because I would live with these feelings – recalls Małgosia. – I have a lot of anger in me anyway. Because living with HIV is a struggle with everyday life, otherness, professional and health insecurity. And worst of all, the eternal fear of being exposed and reacted by friends, at work, and neighbors. And these tons of antiretroviral drugs … – he concludes.
Difficult loneliness
He has been taking them regularly since 1997. She put the pills down once. She held them in hand and could not swallow. After three weeks, she felt sick and blood tests showed a decrease in immunity.
She started taking her medication again. Doesn’t know what to answer friends’ questions: why are you still taking some pills? Has a dilemma: tell them about HIV? Getting tangled up in your difficult world?
– I’m HIV-positive, not them. They deserve a quiet life. No finger pointing, no shame. It is enough for me to experience all my fears and fears – says Małgorzata. – But is there still a normal life for me? Or just loneliness? I tried to open up, but when more men showed up, I did my best to make them leave. It was HIV that was stopping me. Anyway, I never told them about the infection. Why if I didn’t go to bed with them? My sex ended with Piotr. But if you have secrets, others can sense it.