Herpes: The Curse That Wasn’t
Ignorance around herpes and other STDs made coming to terms with my diagnosis harder than it needed to be
Life, I had long ago determined, was a cosmic joke — an empyrean prank — an infinite farce directed, cast, and produced by entities beyond my understanding. I was its unwilling star vehicle, a clown careening through door after door opening to reveal tigers and tragedies disastrous enough to land me in therapy for decades to come.
And then I got herpes.
It was while curled in an armchair, sobbing about my ex for the thousandth time, that a therapist gently suggested that I start dating again — when I got home, of course. I was currently across the country, seeking residential mental health treatment, an experience that ranked among the least sexy and desirable I’d ever had.
Who in their right mind would want to date me?
“I don’t want to,” I cried into a tissue. We had split a full six months earlier and the aftershocks still rippled through me as though I’d been recently electrocuted. I had lost my ability to work, often hiding in the bathroom to cry, emerging with mascara tattooing my cheeks. I slept all day, opening my swollen red eyes to stare, unseeing, at the tapestry on my ceiling…
