Survivors Guilt

[princealbertofb]

I think you should tell yourself that there is no guilt- there can´t be any kind of guilt..... you have done all important things to protect yourself .... so what you did was right.
We "older" man.... or better: all people who know times without Aids have the problem that we have to learn this kind of protection in a special way.... with fear... with the knowledge that there wasn´t any kind of help in the first years.... today people learn how to protect them self in school and it is a more or less normal thing for them.
Tell yourself that you have done all things right.... and with your knowledge you have prevented people from Aids and saved your friends.. or strange people before Aids : So you have no reason to feel guilty... you have a reason to feel proud for help and dissemination of knowledge about Aids.... feel proud and happy... no need for bad and guilty mile:

Not so sure about doing all the right things to protect himself, Fenris... but this could be a case a very good luck... You know just picking the right card in the pack, always. I suppose it could be hard to deal with that kind of pressure too.
But well, there's no reason not to feel happy about having had the right cards always. I agree with Fenris, however that your survival has disabled further disaster in the spreading of the word to the people who needed to hear about being careful. Something inside of you must have wanted very strongly to stay alive too...
My brother has this theory that my deceased brother had a deathwish... something akin to a strong sense of his worthlessness and low self esteem. He always seemed to be strong in his opposition to gay people's fate, but maybe it was getting to him in the end and his relinquishment to AIDS and death may have been the way out without actually having to take his own life. But YOU have wanted to live, and when I read you, I also hear that you are strongly proud of who you are and have a sense of self worth. It is that sense of self worth that has kept you on top of it all, and enabled you not to descend into that state of self abandon. Cherish it and glorify it. You were MEANT to live, East. And we love you for it. mile:
:heartline:

[East]

East,



I am extremely happy that you are here with us instead of suffering from later stages of AIDS. I think that you should feel awfully lucky and be thankful you don't have it.
AIDS is something that everyone is trying not to get and whoever does...God should be blamed.

Please, try to see that you shouldn't feel guilty. Try to be glad that you are here with all of us, to help us overcome allsorts of problems we stumble upon on the way, your advice is always extremely helpful. Be glad that you are here to have a happy life with your partner and to make him happy too.

Also, death is viewed once again as a bad thing. Why? I like to believe that for some people it's much better on the other side. :]

Thanks Irina...that is very kind. I really want to be thankful but whenever I try...and I do try all the time...I see the faces and remember the look of fear in their eyes and I have so much sadness and pain inside of me it cripples me. I always hope that I will find a way out of it but i don't know how to go about it. My therapist was helping me and I thinks he would have but she is gone now and I dont' feel like anyone else will understand as she only worked with empaths and I am a physical empath which presents alot of problems.

As for God and AIDS I remember the cover of one magazine at the time with hundreds of faces of people who had died and the question was..

"Why is God picking all his flowers at once?"

I still want to know.

[princealbertofb]

Thank you fenris...I really WANT to tell myself there is no guilt but I think the way I handled it at the time might have done alot of damage to me..

So how did you handle it that would be worth all that guilt???

[princealbertofb]

Thanks Irina...that is very kind. I really want to be thankful but whenever I try...and I do try all the time...I see the faces and remember the look of fear in their eyes and I have so much sadness and pain inside of me it cripples me. I always hope that I will find a way out of it but i don't know how to go about it. My therapist was helping me and I thinks he would have but she is gone now and I dont' feel like anyone else will understand as she only worked with empaths and I am a physical empath which presents alot of problems.

As for God and AIDS I remember the cover of one magazine at the time with hundreds of faces of people who had died and the question was..

"Why is God picking all his flowers at once?"

I still want to know.

In a state of war, you could be wondering the same question... Didn't Donovan sing, "Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing..." That was about the VietNam war, wasn't it? Too many dying too young and too soon?

[SlipknotRlZZ]

Thanks Irina...that is very kind. I really want to be thankful but whenever I try...and I do try all the time...I see the faces and remember the look of fear in their eyes and I have so much sadness and pain inside of me it cripples me. I always hope that I will find a way out of it but i don't know how to go about it. My therapist was helping me and I thinks he would have but she is gone now and I dont' feel like anyone else will understand as she only worked with empaths and I am a physical empath which presents alot of problems.

As for God and AIDS I remember the cover of one magazine at the time with hundreds of faces of people who had died and the question was..

"Why is God picking all his flowers at once?"

I still want to know.

Well, we can't know. But our world is a very, very cruel place...and where your friends are, it is so much better there. It's awesome, you know. It's got chocolate rivers and cotton candy mountains and gigantic TVs playing the best quality porn all the time, and it's got those little penguins like the ones in Happy Feet, and they make the bestest hamburges there. Oh, did I mention the terrific houses they have there? one for each one of the people there, and it's the house of your dreams.

Live for them. Do what they didn't have the chance to and enjoy what little good there is in life for them...Do you thik maybe that could be a reason to carry on without the guilt, or at least without part of it? Because it sets a...purpose..

[princealbertofb]

The Wikipedia page seems to say the important things about how to deal with this POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER... it is akin to what happened in the VietNam war or the concentration camps. None of this was due to your actions... So it really is a question of learning to forgive yourself for something you haven't actually done, and accepting that you've had a great fortune either to make the right choices, or to have met the right people, or to have avoided the traps that were set out before you. There is something heroic about it, I guess, and that can be something that is really hard to live up to.

[East]

So how did you handle it that would be worth all that guilt???

I think that might be the problem that I can;'t overcome...the thing that keeps me bound to it.. I can't believe that I am going to say thing publicly...I never told a soul this except for my lover.... but I really do want help out of this so I think it may help to say it...it is intensely personal to me.

I have a photo of me at my 21st birthday party and there are 23 people in the photo and they were all my friends...by 1987 they were all dead except fr me and so were all my other friends and pretty much everyone I loved. So...for many years I would take a few minutes a couple times a week and remember them and say their names and talk to them because I had this idea that if I did that then a part of them was alive and I started to forget the names and faces and I would panic and it would terrify me that I had failed them. I know it was irrational but when you are trying to do something and that is all you can do it is everything...I can't remember half of them now and I can barely picture any of their faces anymore and I feel like I killed them all again. I hate to even say it because I will get more depressed but I am afraid if I dont' say it I might not get past this...ever.

[zeon]

Hello East,
I am so sorry to hear you have got depression... I read through your post and felt tjhat you need to be more open when it comes to needing advice because when problems arise hunni we need to get them off our chest in order to move onwards and upwards.. I had a spell of depression when I was 18 after my ex boyfriend slashed my arm open and threw me out onto the street which then lead onto my self harm state of mind.. But thats another story..
The whole motion of crying and being ok is all part of normality... I think personally the reason you get so low is because your waiting for a death sentence to come.. Can I ask have you suffered similar problems and issues like me whereby friends you knew have caught Hiv and then died as a result of aids? I think this can contribute to it.. With regards to having sex babes its never too late to use a condom... If you have lost people you loved through HIV and AIDS why not start using a condom as a mark of respect to them... In life everything happens for a reason and if I am honest.. Maybe your not ment to catch it at all or at this moment in time but with regards to a condom its never too late to start and it may help you overcome your guilt within life.. At the end of the day babes i think if you did practice what you have said you are aware you should be doing it may help you out.. l do feel for you but depression is a hard subject to talk about due to everyones sensitivity levels going up and down.. As one gay speak to another... I want to tell you something and make a promise witnessed by all here...

From this moment onwards even though we dont know each other in person I promise that my inbox here on gayspeak is always open for you to get anything on your mind off your chest... Whatever the nature is I hereby promise to keep all items in strictest confidence at all times... I will give you any honest advice I can find and together we can work on rebuilding you...

Medication is an addictive thing and not worth going onto hence why i refused it but i did manage to pull myself out of depression and it took 18 months to do so...

So on a final note

*big bloody hugz*

If you need someone to talk to, to cry to or to laugh with not only am I here for ya but we all are

Kindest regards

Zeon xx

[zeon]

I am sorry to hear that your friends of 1987 are no longer here.... Have you thought about consulting a medium/spiritualist? They can be pretty good with accuracy providing you get a yes and no answer only and you may find messages coming through from one of them.. Dont blame yourself because they have gone they are the other side waiting for ya and want you to still live life to the full as you did in 87

Kindest regards *hugz*

zeon

[princealbertofb]

I think that might be the problem that I can;'t overcome...the thing that keeps me bound to it.. I can't believe that I am going to say thing publicly...I never told a soul this except for my lover.... but I really do want help out of this so I think it may help to say it...it is intensely personal to me.

I have a photo of me at my 21st birthday party and there are 23 people in the photo and they were all my friends...by 1987 they were all dead except fr me and so were all my other friends and pretty much everyone I loved. So...for many years I would take a few minutes a couple times a week and remember them and say their names and talk to them because I had this idea that if I did that then a part of them was alive and I started to forget the names and faces and I would panic and it would terrify me that I had failed them. I know it was irrational but when you are trying to do something and that is all you can do it is everything...I can't remember half of them now and I can barely picture any of their faces anymore and I feel like I killed them all again. I hate to even say it because I will get more depressed but I am afraid if I dont' say it I might not get past this...ever.

Yes, East, I remember us discussing this in private one day... and I think it may be a key to why you can't let yourself live the happy life. This has scarred you forever. I suppose we ought to wear our scars like warriors, like something to be proud of, being the survivors... I'm saying this because I've been telling my kids at school what the definition of a hero was when Indian chiefs, in the face of adversity, managed to stay alive despite the onslaught of the American cavalry and army... What amazing people they were.
So you may not remember their names, but you remember that they were there and that they were your friends... You remember that you wanted to keep their memories alive. Does it matter what their names were? I don' t think so. Those scars that you are wearing are all real... they are proof enough that these friends MATTERED.