I have discovered that it comes with the territory of blogging that people feel they know you even if they have never met you. People share things with you that they do not share with their partners or therapists. I do not have a problem with that. But I do hope that people understand I am not some guru with answers. It gives me a sense of pride that my ramblings touch people in a way that makes them feel comfortable enough to open up to me.

But if I had the answers I would be writing a self-help book and being lambasted on Oprah, not wittering here.

A week ago while chatting to my twitter crush about his life, I made a comment; it was only after I hit send that it struck me as sad.

I told him that love was the one emotion I did not understand. You see I firmly believe I have never truly been in love. I have been loved but never loved back. And what’s sad about that is that I am 43 years old and have never truly felt love. I have never felt that glow when a name shows up on caller ID. I have never been warm with anticipation while awaiting the arrival of that special person.

On Thursday evening I met my best friend Simon after work. We had a coffee but I needed to talk, so I needed to walk. It was freezing and dark, pretty much how my soul was feeling at that moment in time.

I was trying to explain to him how I was feeling, and he encapsulated it when he said, and I quote “its like you have experienced all the deadly sins but not got the reward”. He said this as we were walking over Waterloo Bridge in sub zero temperatures so I didn’t smack him one (for a change),

Some things are hard to admit even to oneself, but having chosen to blog and having had such personal responses from people I cannot avoid this topic.

So I looked them up

Pride  - an excessive belief in ones own self and abilities, (strike one, I have had this in bucket loads)

Envy - the desire for the traits, status, abilities or circumstances of another. (Yeah, guilty as charged)

Gluttony  - desires that don’t balance with need, (well we all love hairdo sweets huh)?

Lust  - cravings for the pleasures of sex (probably the closest I have ever come to love)

Anger - fury. (Who hasn’t, but to what end?)

Greed  - for so much and so many

Sloth  - laziness (well if you could see my bedroom right now you would understand just how guilty I am of this)

But when I look up the meaning of Love, it does not sit close to home. What I have thought was love had too many of the above emotions attached. And when I break it down the closest I have really come is Obsession.

Maybe I have not been ready or deserving of Love to this point in my life. Maybe I was so full of the above that I missed it when it was in front of me.

I hope that what I am about to say is not true  - but maybe I have missed my opportunity.

I truly hope that my last statement is not true, and I hope that one-day, even if it is only for one day, I truly feel and experience love.

Monday was my anniversary. Exactly a year since I started on my clinical trial and committed to taking 5 pills a day. An odd one to mark and certainly it wasn’t something I wanted to celebrate, but then in an odd way I guess one should celebrate.

But getting my results from last bloods put me on a downer. My viral load is still undetectable. But after the initial spike when first starting meds when my CD4 jumped from 320 to 780 it has slowly dropped, month by month.

Not one month gave me cause for concern, but the increments have added up to a 200-point drop over the last year and my percentage has risen slowly from 22% to 35.5%

My doctors are happy and I guess I should be also. But I find myself worrying and even that cannot be good for the numbers.

I have never been particularly numerically literate, as my accountant will attest. But even I can tell that it's not going in the right direction, even if it's not drastic or even interfering with my health.

Anyhow after I left clinic I went straight to work, and I had only slept for 5 hours the night before after finishing a job at midnight on Sunday. The day went OK but then the academy I tutor at had its annual company meeting.

The boss went through his usual routine of telling us how amazing he is and how lucky we are to be working for him. And I just realized that I have done nothing but complain about him and the place for months.

I got home at 9pm and after a bit of a chat with my mum I popped a zopiclone and went to bed. And slept reasonably well. But on awakening still tired, I pushed myself to go to the gym and while there I had an epiphany of sorts. Doing a job I love in a place I hate, that takes up so much of my time, and gets in the way of allowing me to develop the other parts of my business that give me so much joy was not only pushing me back towards depression but quite possibly suppressing my CD4 levels.

There is a lot to be said for happiness aiding health and the last six months at that particular part of my working life have been thoroughly unenjoyable

So while pumping iron (actually I was polishing the seat of the machine with the fabric of my shorts to be honest as I wasn’t doing very much) I realized that despite the drop in income that will arise from what I was about to do, the lift in spirits was undoubtedly going to help my mental health. Ongoing taking control of my well-being could only benefit my health in general

So I resigned that day, resigned from what has been for the last 12 months a steady source of income. And to say I am nervous about replacing that income with other things is a little of an understatement.

But the sense of relief is palpable and hopefully it will show up in my counts in 4 months time, so tonight my frame of mind is light and optimistic.

Update.

Got a call from the clinic today asking if I could pop in immediately, as something was wrong with one of my tests results. As you can imagine it put the fear of god into me. I had just left work and was walking towards the underground. And couldn’t really hear which test the nurse was talking about. Now luckily I work a 3-minute walk from my clinic so I really was able to go in immediately.

Thankfully when I was there he was able to explain that there was just too much Creatine showing up in my system and nothing major.

He wanted to know if I was injecting steroids. This made me laugh and I asked him to take a good look at me and tell me what he thought the answer was to that. He also wanted to know if I had started taking supplements for my gym routine or was pushing much harder at the gym. I have never taken an exercise supplement in my life as I feel what takes longer lasts longer. And my schedule has been so busy with work I was going about 40% less than usual.

The only thing I could think of was that there are mild doses of steroids in Beecham's Nightnurse, a flu medication I had been taking as it helps enormously with my insomnia.

Anyway he took more blood but I was able to discover that the rest of my results where back and my CD4 has gone back up to 710, which is a weight of my mind.

Am still happy I resigned from the job by the way

Sorry to have been away for a while. Once again Bob had to prompt me to file this.I made no excuses this time. I just explained that part of what I have decided to call this year (see last post) has taken off with a bang. Unfortunately I am still celibate but the achieving part has been crazy. I have had three days off since I started back to work after the Christmas break and some of those working days have been eighteen hours long.  So I really have been neglecting writing anything other than tweets and even that I have let slide a little.

Anyway back to the article, I guess I am not the only one of us who wonders the same. But my list of aches and pains and worries seems to be growing at an alarming rate.

Eyesight: Failing, my prescription has multiplied by 200% in 10 months. I am now at the stage (waiting for the frames I want next to be released onto the market) where at work I have to ask people to double check the small print of products and tools before I use them. (As a hairdresser it’s important I actually use the correct colour.)

Hearing: having always had problems with this in one ear, it seems to be getting worse by the day.  The men in my family have all had problem-hearing. My father was deaf, although at times we were all convinced it was selective deafness. My brother had a number of operations on one ear while still a young boy.  His son has worn hearing aids from childhood. And now it seems to be my turn.  I am sure that everyone I work and socialise with is getting tired of me asking him or her to speak up. And at times I give up and just nod. Again in work this can cause a problem when I think they said cut three inches off and they only wanted a trim,

Add in a 20 year untreatable case of tinnitus  and you can imagine how frustrating this is.  One of the consultants who looks after me on my clinical trial is very soft-spoken and has a habit of covering her mouth when talking and it was on a recent visit I realised how much I have come to rely on lip reading, and I will admit to losing my temper and shouting at her to be more considerate on my last visit.

Insomnia: again a long term ailment of mine, which seems to have been exacerbated since starting medication 12 months ago. My consultant assures me there are no known links between the medication I take and sleep disruption. But it is serious enough that I have been prescribed zopiclone and have been referred to a sleep clinic. It has been suggested that insomnia of the levels I suffer is usually a psychological issue. And it has escalated hugely since my psycho dynamic therapy concluded. Which would lead both my doctor and I to guess that there is some underlying issue that I failed to deal with during that time. And the fact that most of my very vivid dreams are work-related would give rise to the fact I am concerned about my career, which has definitely been the case and continues to be the case for many self employed service providers in the difficult climate we live in.

Skin problems: oddly it wasn’t until I was about to go on medication that I was told that people with HIV are prone to dryer than usual skin. I have always been diligent in looking after my skin and my health and beauty regime is one of the reasons I think I look pretty good for my age. And when you add in my ten weekly trips to Harley Street to see my face guy for a botox top up, I have largely avoided any problems. Until recently that is. Now there are days I look like one of the characters from the original series of V. And some mornings it seems like my face is going to fall off

So you are probably wondering why I don’t make an appointment with one of my many doctors and discuss all these concerns? Well it seems that the last of my list of ailments is my decreasing levels of memory. Once upon a time I never even had to take notes in meetings as my memory was a phenomena. Now I have to ask people to speak up a little and slow down so I can write everything down and then get someone to check what I have written to ensure I got the gist.

But ultimately I guess that its more to do with encroaching middle age  - and we all suffer a certain degeneration at the grand old age of 43!

How it happened was, when I entered Psycho Dynamic Therapy in November 2010 I was on an exceptionally high dosage of anti-depressants and had been for a large part of the year. They had suppressed my sexual appetite to the point of invisibility throughout the year and there hadn’t been much action anyway.

One thing I promised myself upon starting therapy was that I was going to use the time I had with Jade (my therapist) to truly start to get to know myself. At 42 as I was then I really was uncertain as to who I was and what I wanted.

Under medical supervision it was agreed that I would be weaned of the anti-depressants but quite rapidly. The upshot of this, tied in with very intense sessions of therapy, was that for a short time at least my emotions were truly like being on a roller coaster. I could mistake the slightest thing as something that had  never been intended, It certainly made November and December last year very interesting.

Over the new year holidays last year I got a little confused over how I felt emotionally about an old friend, an old friend who had originally started out as a fantasy who went on to become a ‘shag’ but then over time became a very good friend.

We would see each other socially on occasion and had great chats on facebook, but it was becoming apparent to me that my ‘feelings were more than friendly’. On December 30th he texted me as he had seen my picture in GMFA’s “count me in” campaign that had just recently gone live.

He had the day off, as did I and we agreed to meet up. We enjoyed a lazy day of chatting and drinking coffee and just catching up. My emotions were getting very confused and then went off the scale as he took control and right in the middle of the street grabbed me and started to snog me very deep and very hard.

We went for a drink after that and while chatting agreed he would come spend the night with me.The sex was………

Well it was awful actually. Neither of us had changed physically all that much; we knew each other much better this time than we had at the time of the previous event 7 years earlier. But you cannot imagine a more awkward sexual encounter. We went to sleep hugging, saying next time we will be more relaxed.

Next time  - ‘New Years Night’ - we gave up before we even started. So technically it is exactly one year today since I last had sex.

I didn’t consciously decide to stop but I was very conscious in my choice on the first day of 2011 that it would be the year of getting to know me, and of making new friends, and I guess that subconsciously I realised that SEX and all that goes with it could only confuse matters.

So I took it off the table. For me it just didn’t exist. I didn’t have a problem with that, there was so much going on for me anyhow. In January I took a second job to supplement my existing part time one and suddenly found myself working 6-day weeks and 10-12 hour days. Add in weekly therapy session that were at times traumatic as I travelled back through the mire of my past, attempting to release myself from whatever was holding me in stasis. There wasn’t much time for anything else.

By the summer when I kick-started phase two of the year's action plan, that of making new friends, I was very conscious of taking sex out of the equation, as I have confused sex and friendship in the past and didn’t want it to get in the way. I developed one or two crushes on people who came in to my life at this time, but nothing that hurt or embarrassed me, or the object of the crush.

It was around this time I realised that I was indeed celibate. It was also around this time that I started to tweet and write. I knew it would have to be covered at some stage.

When I have told people that I don’t have sex, I have had a plethora of reactions - "Really? Why? What a waste! How do you manage?" So let me answer these questions,

Really? Yes really, you should try it some time

Why? I didn’t feel I could get to know myself while worrying about getting to know someone else. Also while in therapy of any kind I felt it was a good idea to remove something that could make me feel over-critical of myself or worry about what someone else thought of me, and would I measure up.

What a waste! To me the waste was being in some stranger’s house desperately trying to reach orgasm with no emotional attachment, or worse than that, fearful that they might have more or less feeling for me than I did them. (Ego)

How do I manage? Well without being too explicit. God gave me hands!

So it’s been a whole year now… what next I wonder? Well I have already decided that 2012 is the year of career for me. Throughout my ten-year battle with depression, I have never achieved any of what I wanted to in my career. My objectives have changed enormously on that front and a lot of the foundations are already in place.

But I have made a conscious decision to no longer be celibate. I won’t be trawling streets and parks for conquests, but equally I feel I understand myself enough to be able to meet my needs on that front.

So maybe I will call 2012 The Year of the Slightly Sluttish Achiever.

Happy New Year.

This post was first published in Denis Robinson's own blog, which you can find here. 

It took less than a minute but my heart has just a little under an hour ago been smashed into pieces.

I have been sat at home most of the day cursing this chest infection that has laid me up and will put me out of action for pretty much all of Christmas. I’ve had a week of grumbling about being tired and not getting enough sleep. Fed up with clients cancelling their £300 pound hair appointments with little or no notice. The most stressful thing I have had to endure this week was worrying about would I get into Selfridges to buy my coffee for my £200 pound coffee machine that only takes certain pods. I did get in bright and early and now have enough coffee in the house to give probably every one of you who reads this a cup, if you wanted it.

My fridge is full to bursting with delectable offerings, and lets face it we know a lot of it will go to waste. I saw people at the supermarket act in a manner that can only be described as feral while fighting over a loaf of bread. Clearly they are unaware that the high street will only be closed for approximately 36 hours.

In the coming days and weeks I have much to look forward to, close friends either are or have or will soon be moving into London, I have two new work projects starting immediately after the new year, celebrations that will be both exciting and time consuming. I have a visit to see my family to plan and look forward to. I have a year to look back on just now, a year when I focused on my physical and mental health and I took control of both.

I have a more honest relationship with each and every person I know and loved and I look with excitement to that being the case for many years to come. I set out this year with the specific intention of making friends, lots and lots of friends, and I have succeeded in doing just that. Twitter helped admittedly, but equally so did a positive approach to life that had been missing from me for many years.

About 6pm this Christmas Eve, I decided to go for a walk. Being stuck indoors all day was causing me to feel a little stir crazy, I knew nothing would be open and everyone I know will either have left for wherever they are going or be planning to but I wanted to clear my head.

I walked from where I live in Waterloo across the Thames into Soho. I absolutely love London and just walking though the city never fails to lift my spirits. The dark evening and bracing wind clearing my head and made me glad to be alive almost instantly. I traversed the quiet of Covent Garden and popped into Compton’s of Soho to have an orange juice (on strong anti biotic for my chest or as you that know me know there would have been a double vodka in it.)

I didn’t know anyone there but I picked up one of the free gaypers and sat down to relax. I came across an article by a friend of mine, Kristian Johns. It was one he had written for World AIDS Day and in it he spoke of his troubles with antiretroviral medication over the years. But he also spoke of his love and equal concern for his negative boyfriend. It was as if he was speaking through my own lips, as one of the reasons I have stayed single since my own diagnosis is a fear at being constrained to only being able to date people in my condition. Sero-sorting they call it, and even thinking about it drains the blood from my heart. But reading KJ’s piece gave me a little hope that maybe I too will find what I long for.

So I guess you’re wondering what broke my heart?

As I left to embark on the short walk home, I thought I should stop at a cash point and get some money out. No real reason  - there will be nowhere open for me to go and spend it. But I guess I just like to have a little emergency cash lying around. As I walked toward the HSBC at Cambridge Circus and the bank of ATMs there I consciously avoided one side as a homeless person was sitting between the two machines available. The guy looked intimidating and I wanted to get in an out quick.

I ducked round the corner and the inevitable homeless person was sitting there also. I went to the machine two down from where he was sat and pretended to not hear him asking for change. But something made me stop, I don’t know what it was but in hindsight I feel it was serendipity.

I remembered that I actually had a pocket full of change, about £8 in fact and the fact that I was withdrawing £100 in case of emergency suddenly seemed perverse. So I emptied my pocket and went over to give him the contents. As I passed it to him, he thanked me for wearing my red ribbon and told me he was positive. I squatted down and told him I also am HIV+. He started a conversation with me about medication and what he is on, what he has had to go through to get meds and how some had horrific side effects for him.

Now my friend KJ and I who I mentioned earlier are no strangers to the side effects of antiretroviral medication; we were just discussing it this week while I cut his hair.

But suddenly this man (yes I said man)  - a man I would normally treat as an obstacle or even worse, a shadow  - brought home to me just how lucky I am.

I have a family who love me and would never see me on the street. I have great friends with whom I can be as open and honest as I want without fear of being cast aside. Those same friends gave me a life outside of being defined by HIV, To them I am Denis and that is it, full stop, and period .I have a roof over my head, my flat is small but it is warm and well decorated and it is a place I have where I can spend time alone re-charging when life has all seemingly got too much. I have a career, a career with so many wonderful new opportunities opening up in such a short space of time that when I look at where I was a year ago it's almost unbelievable. I have a book next to me to read when I finish typing. My 48” Sony TV with over 250 channels to choose from is on in the background showing Cirque de Soleil. My feet are up on my comfortable sofa and I have a cup of steaming tea next to me.

I am not a shadow, I am not an obstacle, and I am a happy, healthy, fortunate man.

I'm fortunate to be alive, with money in my pocket. And friends and family a touch of a button away if I need to talk to them.

I do not mean to bring anyone down at Christmas, but just ask you to be mindful and thankful of what you have.

Your family may not buy you the gifts you hoped for; you may end up screaming at each other by sundown tomorrow.

If any or all of that happens, even if they don’t and you have the perfect day . . . .

Give thanks.

Happy Christmas

This post was first published in Denis Robinson's own blog, which you can find here.

So Bob Leahy asked me if I could write a column about food for my next instalment to PositivelIte.com, and I have to say this has challenged me hugely on more than one level. I bemoaned the fact that it’s not a topic that I enjoy therefore why should I write about it. But my best friend gave me a metaphorical slap by telling me I had been set an assignment and I had to do it. I bitched and moaned that I am not a writer but a hairdresser and why should I? But Simon was quick to point out that anyone reading my column views me as a writer so I should get it on with it.

Bob had to chase me up and ask for a submission like a teacher having to ask for homework to be done or a boss asking why I hadn’t reached my deadline on a project.  I made all sorts of excuses in my email to him but I set my alarm an hour and a half earlier than normal so I could write this.  So here goes

FOOD – It’s stuff you eat

You see, I’m not a foodie. It’s fuel to keep the fire burning. I can pretty much tell you what I am going to eat by the time of day and day of the week. I have only had one foodgasm in my life so I only have a little bit of an idea what everyone is talking about when they get over excited.

I was asked recently if I had to chose one meal to eat for the remainder of my days what would it be? I admit struggling with this, not because there are so many wonderful dishes to chose from but because I couldn’t decide between lightly pan fried Calamari and…………..TOAST. Sacrilege, huh? But I admit I LOVE toast.  I love all things bread, if I’m honest, but I also love calamari. So I wrestled with the question and made a decision. If I had to chose one meal to eat for the remainder of my days it would be ‘calamari on toast’ . You see what I did there?  Best of both worlds and whichever element I wasn’t in the mood for I would leave on my plate (odds are high it would be the squid)!

Now the anomaly here is, I am actually a great cook. Very imaginative and experimental. I enjoy nothing more than creating a meal for others. However when I dish up, I am happy to sit back with a nice glass of GOOD wine and watch others enjoy.

So it turns out I am a feeder more than an eater, as my ex-partner who gained six kilos within three months of us moving in together will attest. Even his family will rhapsodise over my skills in the kitchen. On the first Christmas we went to visit them in Venice, my gift to them was to cook them Christmas dinner. Mirko had been very unforthcoming as to what I could get his parents as a gift, Every time I asked him for ideas he said in the way only an Italian native can “don worry abad it”.

But I am a well-raised Irish boy and I did worry about it, and when I discovered that his parents were booking us into a restaurant for Christmas lunch the problem was solved. I would cook for them.

It started out as a meal for four but the guest list rapidly grew  as word got out. So on Christmas Day 2005 I found myself in stranger’s kitchen preparing a feast for 16 hungry Italians. I had emailed a shopping list to his mama and secreted ingredients that I could not do without in my luggage and at 5am that Christmas morn I set about feeding the masses.

And despite nerves on everyone’s part it was a success. Even his brother-in-law I had never met came back for seconds, Diego was apparently a very picky eater and his wife had pre prepared his favourite dish of beef and potatos and brought it with just in case.

When I heard this I laughed and said "are you sure he is not Irish? " But with a name like Diego of course, he couldn’t be, right? When he arrived he was a hulk of a man, 6ft4  and 18 stone of solid mass with the brightest orange hair you have ever seen. There is a small possibility that there is a dark brooding opera loving pasta eating heart throb running a farm in County Clare who is puzzled about why he doesn’t fit in but that’s a another story.

I guess I have always eaten well if a little boringly myself. My family were a, meat and two veg for most meals type, with the occasional treat thrown in (Fish and Chips). My father’s idea of a nutritious dinner was a slice of bread with jam (jelly) spread over it.

So my own needs are simple, having always eaten well if not adventurously I didn’t feel any need to look into changing my diet to improve my health after I was diagnosed HIV+

But since Bob asked me to write this column I will admit (begrudgingly) that I have been thinking a little more about what I eat and what’s on offer in this city I call home.

It’s not hard to eat well in London. Our reputation for stodgy food is one that is long overdue to leave these shores. Any area I spend time in has everything from great steak to wonderful sushi to home cooked comfort food available. And I will admit to laziness and I do eat out a lot.

But when at home it’s mostly ….Toast. But if I am in the mood for comfort food then you really will have a long way to go to beat my Grilled Cumberland Sausage  and Sweet Potato Mash with a dollop of home-made green Pesto.

Another little use for pesto by the way is Smoked Salmon, with Crème Fraiche,  Pesto (red or green) and some freshly squeezed lemon juice.

On Toast of course

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!