Clearly I’m not really sure how to use this site, so I apologize for the lack of content. My name is Aaron, hello, this is my way of getting some things out of my head and into yours, the reader’s. I’m not a great writer, and I may make some grammatical errors so be a patient/understanding person.
I guess I’ll start by explaining what’s going on here. I’ve titled this specific story of my life “Living Positive”, not like the self help, look to god, or whatever happy life thing. I’ve been living with HIV (human imuno-deficiency virus) since I was twenty, so about four years.
I’m going to start before all that happened though, there’s going to be some things I say that have to do with my life now, and in order for everything to make sense I need to explain how I got here. There’s going to be a lot of time jumping between now and the past throughout the entire storyline, so everything is going to make sense.
I want to start kind of in the middle of everything, that’s where things started to actually form so that’s what makes sense. When I was thirteen I moved down to Florida to live with my dad, I was living in Ohio, I was miserable, I always had problems with my mom, I just needed a change. I got removed from school in a day, my dad drove up, I remember we went to some kind of office and he did something, but I can’t remember exactly what. We drove down to Florida after I said goodbye to my family, because everyone is in Ohio. I didn’t have any friends to say goodbye too, so that made things easier. Part of wanting to leave was that I had to friends, I was bullied a lot, things started to get really dark for me really quick.
My dad lived with a woman named Jeannie, at one point she decided I needed to know that he didn’t even ask her if I could come, he just packed up and got me. When I got there I was enrolled in school, for about three weeks. I actually ended up having to do this standardized testing for the state based on what they were supposed to have learned throughout the year. I passed, very well, because they were learning things I learned in elementary school. Same text books and everything.
I made some friends, which was great, I still have some of those friends. One of them, her name is Valerie, she lived in the same neighborhood as me, we took the same bus. I wanted a friend, so I went to her house and knocked on her door and asked if she wanted to do something, which ended up being the book store which I was perfectly happy with. Reading is kind of my thing. So, I made a friend, and met her friends and made more friends. She’s the first person I told was I was gay (other than my cousin), and her reaction was a non reaction, so I became pretty open about it around them. My family still didn’t know.
During the summer vacation my great grandmother died and I went back to Ohio for the funeral. Everyone kept asking when I’m coming back, because being with my dad was supposedly “temporary”. I came back to Florida, and did normal summer time things, which usually involved avoiding the rain. And the school year started again.
The next school year was pretty basic. I never really excelled in school because I didn’t participate, I didn’t like talking in front of people so I rarely answered questions, the books assigned were usually not interesting to me (I did read Animal Farm, that I liked), and home work just pissed me off. The way I saw it was I spent hours at school being told not to “waste their time” but they wanted to give me something to do at home to waste my time, I’m still a strong believer in this. I always passed tests, I’m very good at retaining information and learning, I’m clever, I was just considered lazy. I was never good at math, I’m still no good at math. I ended up having to go to summer school.
During that year we moved from the house we were in that was owned by some crazy old guy that liked to just let himself in whenever he pleased, to a house my dad was working on and I asked if we could go there. It was out of the school district, by about 15 miles or so, but they used a different address so I could keep going. I was told I could go to the high school out there with the friends I made of I passed, which I didn’t. So I went to a different school.
Enter Fletcher, the school at the beach. This school was the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me. Second worst. Fletcher Highschool is a melting pot, there’s a lot of kids open enrolled from further inland, it’s the school all the kids from the navy base go to, plus all the kids that live at different parts of the beaches. My first few weeks I spent the same way I spent my days in Ohio, alone listening to music just kind of aimlessly wandering. Finally a girl in class asked why I just stand by myself and when I told her I didn’t know anyone she had me sit with her and her friends at lunch. I met with them, and more people started coming around and I started talking more. There was one person in particular that just made everything go from how I was, to so much more. One day he came walking up and doing something ridiculous, his hair was longer and purple, he was taller, and his name was Justin. Justin would go back and forth between groups of people, and I went with him to the end of the courtyard, this is where I met the goonies.
The goonies were the misfits, they all found each other, and until then I didn’t really know there were people like me. Emo kids were everywhere, goth kids, and everything else you could think of. This became my group, I was actually kind of cool to them.
By this point I was already drinking, and occasionally I would take some to school and drink before classes. This was not unusual for this school. There was one day I had a two litre of soda and I dumped most of it out and poured in vodka to fill it back up. I took it to school, and shared it, some of my new friends couldn’t hold their liquor as well as me. Some other kid had found out and ran to the resource officer and told on a girl he didn’t like, she was called into the office and questioned and didn’t give my last name. They called her back in a few hours later with ID badges of all the Aaron’s in the school, so she had to point me out.
I was called into the office, by this point everyone knew why, and was told what was going to happen. I panicked, so instead of going home after school I went with a friend who lived on the navy base. This was crucial because you can’t get on the base unless you have an ID or have someone with you with an ID, my dad didn’t. I called them and said I would come home when we wasn’t angry. The school had called them, but he had no idea what happened because he didn’t answer and they didn’t leave a message. I pretty much fell on my own sword, and Jeannie had a friend with a military ID so he could come and get me.
The next week we had to meet with the dean, and she gave my dad a choice, a drug and alcohol course for a few weeks, or I could go to Lackawana, an alternative school, he picked the latter. An alternative school is where students go when they’re considered delinquents. Most of them end up in jail eventually, sometimes while they’re there. My dad’s reason for sending me there was he didn’t want to be punished for what I did, because the drug and alcohol course would be for both of us. He actually could have used the course as well. He was punished along with me anyway because the closest bus stop was an hour walk away, so he had to drive me, at 4:30 am.
Before I was sent to alternative school I was just doing in school suspension, it’s like an all day detention. The girl that got caught with me was in there too, her parents were doing the course. ISSP was actually pretty fun, the supervisor never really cared, so we’d all sit and talk and screw around. Just not too loud, and if someone important came in we were “working on sheets”. We just had to clean the cafeteria after lunch, which was just wiping down tables and pushing them against walls. The tables folded up and were on wheels, so we could just ride them around the floor.
I met Ariele in ISSP, she was in there for beating a girl with Tourette’s, because she tried to fight her first. She rolled up a piece of paper, and taped another one to it, writing “super blunt” on the front. She threw it at us, and we all started talking, and became friends. Justin was also in there with us, he usually lived there, he had rubber bands in his hair making it stick up in weird directions “just because”. Christmas break came, and when I came back I would go to Lackawana.
What happened at Lackawana and after is the downfall of everything. I’ve already made this pretty long, so I’m going to save the rest of that, at some point I’ll probably have to jump back to elementary and middle school, but that’s way later.
aaronmayday 