French Fries on the Ground

This is a piece I wrote for our monthly JVC Newsletter:

He walked into my office one afternoon, looking handsome in his slacks and dress shirt. We had met once before and had chatted on the phone a couple of times, as he kept me posted on the latest news in his life. Just 12 days older than me, I find I can connect with him on a different level than I can with my other clients. All he wants is to be independent; to go to college and get a degree; to go to work each day and leave smiling, knowing that he is doing what he loves. Yet, here he was - twenty-two years old and HIV positive, living with his grandparents, working part-time, longing to be back in the Army where he felt he belonged. That afternoon, though, all of his fears and longings seemed to have disappeared. He walked a little different and seemed to hold his head a little higher. When I asked him what had changed, he told me, with a huge smile, that he had moved into his own apartment and had bought a new car, after having saved since he left the Army. Excited for him, I gave him a high-five and told him how happy I was that he was happy. We chatted for a while about his life, his family and then about my life and my family. As our time together came to an end, he asked me to walk outside with him to see his new car. We turned the corner into the parking lot, and there it was: a "new" 1998 Subaru hatchback. We walked towards it and as I looked inside, he said, "Don't look at the french fries on the ground!"

The funniest sentence carried so much meaning for me. All the baggage seemed to melt away. I was no longer looking at a twenty-two year old afraid of never being his own person. I was no longer looking at a young man scared of dying. No. I was looking in the eyes of a friend who will not allow HIV to define who he is.

Working with clients my own age has been one of the biggest struggles for me this year. With each 20-something that walks into my office, the faces of my friends, cousins, and classmates flash before my eyes. I spent most of my senior year of college researching how students view HIV/AIDS, and found that many are educated about the epidemic, but few believe that they could become infected. My clients once thought that, too, until that fateful day when they walked in to receive the results of their HIV test and were told that it came back positive. The fear in their eyes when they come into my office is real. One client once asked me, "Am I going to be ok?" These new friends of mine have taught me so much and it is in their fear that I find beauty; it is in their joys that I find my biggest reward. When they realize that HIV does not have to define them, that they can define themselves - God has shown me something beautiful. Life is not about how much money you make or what people think of you. Life is about learning. Life is about the journey. Life is about realizing that we form our own paths and we define our own lives. HIV positive or HIV negative - all that matters is our love of self. That is what I learned on that day when I was told not to look at the french fries on the ground, and I am forever grateful to that twenty-two year old friend who taught me.