"but you look great!"  hahahaha, thats the anwer often I hear when I tell somebody that I have AIDS. As if I should look like crap for them to beleive me. Reading some of the posts about privacy and disclosure has me with my thinkin cap on again. I think it is of great importance for a person living with HIV to be careful about who the disclose to. After all this disease is not an easy one for other people to hear we have. I was told on the day of my diagnosis to not tell anyone. Not even my family until I had time to consider the reaction. How odd is that? Only with HIV are we counseled to keep quiet. All under the guise of "Its for your own good" Even then it hard to keep busy bodies from constantly asking what is the matter with you. I also learned very quickly that when you tell one person, even the closest of friends, that they are gonna tell some too. In fact it isnt really fair to disclose to someone and then ask them to keep it to thenselves. How can they? Especially if they are close to you, they are probably hurting at the news themselves and will need to talk about. So I keep it somewhat private now, although its getting harder with doing public service and other such things to help in the fight against stigma that AIDS brings with it. If your interested check my website that is my small effort to help fight social stigma, www.scottsfriends.com.Some day I hope that we dont have to stop ourselves and ask ourselves if telling the next person will have some kind of hidden cost that may come with the disclosure. Until then we should all respect peoples wishes of privacy and pray that when they do get up the confidence to say,"I have HIV" that they wont regret it. Peace to all, your friend,Scott