my birthday...and my truth, my catharsis

> 10am. Birthday breakfast at the ice cream cafe around the block - coffee, almond croissant, and The Portable Atheist, edited by Christopher Hitchens.

Happy Birthday, alien.

I would have preferred to make a kooky audio blog on my birthday but, as events have turned out, as life as we know it made things turn out, I don't think an initially kooky audio blog ending with the sound of me breaking down and sobbing would have worked.

A few days ago I came clean to N. I could not, will not, submit her to any more snaps, bouts of anger, and avoidance on my part. I love her far, far too much to stupidly yell at her with undeserved anger and frustration. So I sat her down, and told her my story. I brought my brown paper bag full of medicines to the table and showed her each one, saving the two most critical prescriptions for last. "This one," I told her as I held up a vial full of large long white oval pills, "is an antibiotic that helps prevent me from getting pneumonia. This one helps me from catching nasty fungal stuff." Then I held up a container of small pale yellow round pills. "This is for hypertension, like what you have. It keeps my blood pressure under control."

Finally I held up the last two clear brown plastic containers and said, "Now, these two pills are called anti-retrovirals. What they do is prevent a certain kind of virus inside me from replicating. If I stop taking these pills the virus will develop resistance to them and in time the pills will be useless and the virus will reproduce like crazy, kill off all my antibodies.....and I'll die. That virus is called HIV. And I've had it for over 11 years. I'm sorry, N. I'm so sorry."

She sat there nodding, trying to understand. I knew that she knew about AIDS and how nasty it is and how millions and millions have died from it. She seemed a mite stoic at that moment, her profoundly sweet and humble old lady face nodding at the clinical and medical facts I was spouting. But I also sensed that......the very loving, very mortally loving and vulnerable mother in her was crumbling and buckling for me, because of me, her youngest son.

I had broken her heart. I had held back over 11 years' worth of truth, lived 11 years' worth of lies. I kept it from her out of utter fear and out of shame.

Deep inside I knew it was probably just a matter of time before it had to - before it must - surface. She was the last person I wanted to tell. She had been through so much already all these years, worries way, way, waaaay too much for her kids and grandkids, watched her deeply beloved husband, my dad, die after 54 years of a beautiful partnership. The last thing I wanted was to hurt her, and....well, this.

And she still loves me, worries for me. She didn't turn away, didn't push me away as I most gravely feared would happen. And it brought to my mind this piece of art I made years back, a simple picture I took, with words I wrote superimposed on it.

Happy Birthday, alien. Happy bitter yet cathartic truths.