By Piason Maringwa
Fear-based living is a prison whose final end can only be experienced when one is fully healed of the fear or has accepted one’s situation.
There are many reasons why people fear their current situations but this is very counterproductive because fear will never solve any problem.
When you live in constant fear of others’ reactions, fear of the future, fear of losing friends , loved ones and relatives it makes your nervous system so overstretched and life becomes very sad and argonising indeed.
Through fear your brain becomes dysfunctional; your immune system is weakened to breaking point and you are always on high alert. You are hypervigilant and tense. Fear keeps your soul chained, draining you of your potential and the zeal to go on with life.
Due to inherited and environmental influences, our lives are often painted in hues of fear. We tailor our reactions and choices to prevent anger, abandonment, and abuse from others. Out of fear, we lie to everyone including those so close to us rendering any help impossible.
God in His own cleverness, wisdom wants us to enjoy fear-free lives inspite of all the challenges we encounter in this world including living with HIV and other debilitating ailments as long as we believe in Him and are not consumed by fear. If you are fear-filled, you can’t truly love God and those around you because you fear messing up so badly.
You can’t love others because you are scared of what they might do or say; you can’t love life because anxiety pervades your mind and innerself. Remember, too: You can’t love someone you are afraid of.
What this therefore means is for one to be able to disclose one’s HIV+ status one has to defeat fear first removing fear from one’s heart so that one can love wholeheartedly. God longs to drench you in such perfect love that you are freed from fear-based reactions and choices. When you live in love, you live in God and you are free from fear and superstition all the time
When I tested HIV+ back then in 1999 I was filled with a kind of fear, shame and self pity that made life one big rollercoaster of meaninglessness. I felt like I was suffocating to death all the time. Each day felt like it was my last day on this earth.
I was like a cornered animal of prey waiting for the final blow to wipe the living daylights out of me. All the time I was consumed by the fear of trying to find out how my family especially my children Simba and Rutendo who were just 8 and 5 respectively then would cope after I was gone to thy kingdom come. I had been working for only 5 years by then and had nothing that would see them into adulthood. The realization that I had to do something before I died gave me the energy and zeal to keep on fighting and disclose my status to my wife first so that she would know the real situation and hence prepare for life as a widow and single mother looking after two orphaned children.
Disclosure had to wait for another four years because each time I tried to disclose I would just feel like it was not the best time and the right words would just fade away.
Meanwhile, as I began to gain good health I felt the need to have sex but I knew that I couldn’t have sex with my wife before telling her my HIV+ status.
Everything has to happen at its predestined time and soon enough the day for disclosure arrived.
In the afternoon of that day after lunch I sat down with Mai Simba my dear wife to discuss serious issues now that I was almost fully recovered from TB. There is one thing so unique to my Mai Simba which I had never known before .Above everything else Mai Simba loves to be told the truth no matter how painful it is.
Here I was sitting with her after lunch and trying to work out how to disclose the frightening news to her. I began by asking her how she would move on with life in the event that I died. She reassured me that I would not die anytime soon since I was now almost fully recovered and was making really good progress towards full recovery.
I further asked her whether she would remarry after I had died and she got very impatient and angry with me and asked whether I was losing my mind why the hell I asking that question. Seeing that I was not making any headway I finally told her that I had the disease that was not curable to which she asked whether I had AIDS and I told her that was it.
To say she was frightened would be an understatement, she was devastated and for some time she was silent. After a long moment of silence she finally asked how long I had known my status and I explained to her that I had been tested at St Luke’s Hospital while undergoing TB treatment in 1999 and all the time had been looking for an appropriate time and way to tell her.
We later on talked over our situation fully and there and then decided to do safe sex and that’s how we stopped having any more children because for the next eighteen years we engaged in safe sex only and this was to avoid infecting Mai Simba.
We learnt much later though that while we were trying to protect Mai Simba from infection I had already infected her way back before 1994. Since then we have lived a very eventful life where we try to help others like us cope with their situations. Mai Simba has been my pillar of support ever since and I am so grateful to her for all the good things she has done and continues to do for me. God has been very kind to us by taking us this far. We have also been blessed with five grandchildren from our two children.
Our wish is to see all HIV+ people disclosing their statuses and taking their ART publicly like us so that they live positive lives free from fear .We also want to see the resumption of Support Groups which we believe can bring about the much needed unity of purpose to all of us people living with HIV.
Piason Maringwa is a teacher at Batanai High School near Manoti in Gokwe South District.
He has been living with HIV for more than 30 years and has been talking about his HIV+ status since 2004.
