My only mistake was not telling him about my clinic appointment, where I was excitedly registering our pregnancy. The moment that should have marked the beginning of a beautiful chapter changed instantly when the nurse said, "Oh, we need to do HIV tests." My heart sank as the results came back positive. I froze, unable to process or react. The fear of how my partner, an African man, would take this news paralyzed me. I couldn’t find the strength to tell him.
Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. Life moved forward, and our daughter was born. He only discovered the truth when he took her for a clinical checkup. Although he initially kept quiet, he later brought it up, said he was sorry, and I thought he had forgiven me. The silence lulled me into believing we had moved past it, especially when he began helping me with my medications.
Four years later, I was still holding on to the hope that we were a family, that our bond had survived. But then, the truth struck hard and unexpectedly: he traveled back to our home country and married someone else in a court wedding. I was shattered, left with nowhere to turn, and a storm of betrayal clouded my thoughts.
He didn’t stop there. My HIV status, something I had kept private, became public knowledge among his relatives and friends. The whispers and stares made me a laughingstock, and the stigma cut deeper than any betrayal. He would remind me that he tested himself regularly and was always negative. It played over in my mind, that when we began dating and during courtship, we never had those crucial conversations or tests.
Now, the burden is suffocating, and the pain feeds thoughts I don’t want to entertain.
