EDIT: I just got back from student health and the HIV test was negative.  I'm really grateful and happy and yeah.  I think I had just spooked myself… :/

I'm really afraid and need to write about it. I have a doctor's appointment on Monday, and I'm going to get tested for STIs. According to Bill Clinton I've only had sex with one person, though I've fooled around with two additional people. But the third showed a lot of red flags that I didn't heed (mostly because I was naive – I had never gotten tested or anything like that before). I had only been dating her about a month when it happened, and it almost immediately felt incredibly wrong. I learned my lesson, and would never have been promiscuous again. In fact, I had even planned on waiting until marriage, like I had when I was a kid. It was just too terrifying to become sexually active with someone without knowing everything about them. And this woman was nice, but like all the women I date she seemed nervous like she was trying to hide something. And when we broke-up, it didn't break my heart. It didn't give me any emotional damage. I felt guilty, because it was the first time that I fooled around with someone without it being affectionate. But it didn't leave emotional scars.

I've never been able to do anything or enjoy anything without paying vastly more than it gave. And lately, I mean… I'm actually looking forward to this next semester. It's going to be a challenge. And when I get through this year I'll have degrees. And I'll feel really good about that. And just, I've finally decided that I am a human being and that I have a right to fight for a future and find someone to love and everything like that. I've become determined to be happy and put all the misery behind me. I mean, for the first time in my life I have hope. And so it's almost like it's time. Like it's time to say, "Karl, you're actually starting to feel pretty good… so… guess what! You're HIV positive now!" I'm terrified. And as I read through symptoms, it all adds together. She had skin problems, I got sick about 2 weeks after we fooled around, I had unexplainable and severe fatigue for a while, I find strange whitish stuff in my mouth that looks like long strips of skin… and I didn't know her nearly as well as I should have. I also caught her lying to me on several occasions, which was part of why we ultimately broke-up – she acted really strange/suspicious.

And I am cursed. And I've endured a lot, but this would be too much. If I could make a list of things I don't want to happen, getting HIV or AIDs would be at the very top… above being alone for the rest of my life (which becoming HIV+ entails), and above being killed. I've been so terrified of STIs and sex that I didn't have sex until I was 23. But I am honest to God cursed, with broken bones, stitches, random assaults, neglect, infections, surgeries, hornet swarms, dog attacks, [etc.], and broken hearts. And now that I've finally started to get over it and have hope, now that I've started to fight my way out of the darkness, my intuition tells me that the dark place is going to claim me again. That it is going to come and impale me upon a pike for daring to ever raise a hand against it. That I will never escape or know happiness. My intuition whispers that I will be killed for what I did, and that I will never be allowed to be happy. In fact, I've had a lot of random intuitions over the years. Suspicions almost as if they were prophecies. And this would make sense of all of them, all of the ones I couldn't understand.

I'm terrified. I don't want to go back there…