Health care workers will set forth on the long road to conquering their exhaustion.
The legacy of our diminished relationships and restricted lives will surely take hold. Anger at what we have lost will intensify.
#Christmas gay men making out tumblr full#
Once we are out of the crisis, and we have caught our breath, the full horror of grief is likely to emerge. And its impacts on our mental health and wellbeing will be felt for many years to come. To reflect upon this painful chapter of history gives us strong clues about the challenges we face: pulling out of the Covid wreckage will take time. We can see how these experiences contribute to the depression and anxiety some of us carry stillĮpidemics have long term social impacts, that much is clear. Taking a step back, we can see how these experiences contribute to the depression and anxiety some of us carry still, our struggles with substances and alcohol, as well as our long-term physical health challenges.Īnd whilst the prognosis for well-medicated HIV positive people now is much better – preventing disease progression and making infection impossible – hostility and stigma are still widely experienced, with potentially devastating consequences. The scale of support offered, despite the tireless interventions of cutting-edge organisations like Terrence Higgins Trust and London Friend, could not meet the magnitude of the trauma we endured. Some of us felt guilty for having survived. The grief, personal and shared, was at times overwhelming. We bore witness to the deaths of friends and lovers, and friends of lovers, and friends of friends. Those of us who survived are grateful, but the memories endure.
Some of us felt guilty for having survived.ĪIDS changed our identities, altered our relationships, limited the sex we had, and shaped our expectations of what we could achieve and who we might be. By the mid-90s, with advances in medication, deaths started to fall. Community based organisations, like Healthy Gay Manchester and the Aled Richards Trust in Bristol, led the way in educating gay men in the face of the onslaught.
The much-lauded public education campaign ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance’, with its tombstones and lack of acknowledgement of same sex relationships, effectively blamed and isolated the people who most needed support. Section 28, for example, banned schools from even acknowledging lesbian and gay lives. ‘I waited for his call’.ĪIDS flourished in a climate of deep shame and fear, fuelled by the violent commentary of homophobic media and by authorities that variously ignored what was happening, or insisted that nothing should be done, or systematically excluded gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men when they were most vulnerable. Kim smiles and walks towards me, and pulls me out of the room, by my elbow, into the hallway. She had been there with her housemate/best friend John, a six-foot two Morrissey lookalike, with whom I chatted all night about Thatcher and the poll tax, shared a passionate kiss, and gave my phone number. I then realise I am standing next to Kim, a psychology student I met at a party last June in New Cross, just after I had finished my second-year exams. I move towards the centre of the room to dance, throw my hands in the air, and sing along. There’s a DJ in the front room who’s playing Lisa Stanfield – she’s been around the world and still can’t find her baby – and then, in a moment of pure festive joy, the Communards. I pull up the sides of my mouth to approximate a smile, take a can of lager from the sink full of ice, and back out of the kitchen, hoping to find someone I know who isn’t going to remind me that since I came out last Spring, the allure of the library has been overridden by the charms of Old Compton Street. ‘We’ve not seen much of you this term’, he says, ‘Victor Hugo misses you’. The first person I bump into is a guy from my French literature class. I arrive late, having been to a Gay Soc Christmas Mince Pie and Mince, and I am much relieved that nobody has followed the instruction, although there is a guy carrying a five-foot inflatable with the word ‘Chiquita’ emblazoned on it, and another who has fashioned a hat out of several pounds of fruit from the local market. The party’s theme is ‘come dressed as a banana’.