Question:
(Please excuse the sappy title)

I year ago, I was seeing a girl with whom, for once, I felt I could see myself. We made jokes about kids, moving in together, even marriage, jokes that soon turned into fantasies, plans--or at least they got to the point when we couldn't tell the difference.

I didn't know how I felt until one of my friends ask me plainly, "do you love her?" It was the first time I could confidently answer that question with a "yes" instead of a "well... not really," "depends on what you mean by 'love'," or "I'm not sure." Being extremely shy if not outright a-social or antisocial, I can't begin to explain what it was like to finally open up all of myself to someone and feel they she was doing the same.

That same night, literally seconds after I said, "yes, I'm totally in love with her," she calls and says she has something she needs to tell me. I told her I'd call her back and went home.

She told me over the phone. I felt absolutely nothing, my body went limp. I told her I'd have to call her back. I didn't want to do anything but sleep. the next day, I noticed some lesions, and got checked out. The next week, all I could do was sleep.

When I got my results, the doctor called me on my cell phone while I was on a bus. For ten minutes, I fought everything back, trying my best to not breakdown on the bus. As soon as I got to my apartment, the moment after I locked the door, it happened. I've never cried like that in my entire life.

A swift phone call, less than a minute, was all it took. "I can't be with someone who can do this to someone else." Click.

Restaurants, grocery stores, music, movies, that salad she used to make, the beer mugs we bought together--I still can't even bring myself to go to them, listen to them, see them, eat them, drink from them anymore.

And more than that, the feeling of opening yourself up to someone more than ever before, and this happening--the disease is a reminder of one the only things that ever felt right, and a reminder that it never really was.

Sometimes, I think I still love her. How can love and hate coexists like this? How can you want to cherish a memory and at the same time want to forget it completely?

From wanting to sleep all day, to all day resisting the urge to give way to convulsive sobbing, to locking myself in my apartment, to quasi suicidal thoughts (not that I want to die, I just want to stop feeling), and now to therapy, it just seems like my reactions are transforming instead of getting better.

I still can't bring myself to trust anyone anymore. I know it takes time. Of course it does. I'm just tired of waiting.

And even if I find someone again, how do I know that I've found what I'm looking for?--especially since I once thought I found it, that infectious sort of love, but it infected me with something I didn't ask for. A love turned into a disease, a lingering feeling oscillating between love, hate, and perpetual, unforgetable scars.

I can't figure out how love can turn into something like this.

Answer:
Did she know that she was HSV+ before she exposed and infected you?

Do you think she really loved you the way you loved her?

Can a person really love someone and not tell them of their HSV+ status?

Answer:
Thats the question. More than that though, its the violent confrontation of the fact that even though you may be so sure of something, that confidence means absolutely nothing.

How do you know if what you see there in that person is really them? How do you have a relationship now that theres this thing in your body reminding you that you will never know?

Also--and this is where it doesn't make any sense--why is it that I still sometimes think I see it in her, though I hate her, though I haven't seen her since.

Its the feeling of not being able to trust anyone... yet still wanting to trust, and the only person you can think of is the last person you trusted, knowing full well that it was in vain.

I admit, love is based on a certain amount of faith, but what do you do when you distrust your own urge to love.


(she knew for two years)