All the above -
a gift: its brought a lot of amazing people into my life.
A blessing: taught me who matters in my life & my husband took himself out with the negative trash.
a strength: I came out with my HIVness my 1st year diagnosed, used my high school and college journalism skills, my want to save people from themselves (I wanted to be a social worker and help kids who wanted to shoot up their schools) I've been able to utalize my poetry writing skills to land me into multiple HIV poetry anthology books. I now work in HIV services in my local health dept & I've worked in a hospital in an ID clinic with NO college degree. HIV/AIDS helped me do that. I've presented at HIV conferences & been flown to 6 states for free to attend HIV conferences.
a curse: it helped ruin my marriage that was doomed from the start & got us evicted within months of my 1st year diagnosed.

Its like an unplanned pregnancy

For me, HIV was unexpected. To be honest, it didn't affect my day-to-day life at all. I still do the things I used to do; in fact, it's actually helped me because I use it as an excuse not to do things I don't like doing, hahaha.

Para mí el ViH fue algo inesperado, a decir verdad no me afectó en nada en mi día a día, sigo haciendo las cosas que antes hacía, más bien me acomodó porque lo uso como excusa para no hacer cosas que no me gustan hacer jajjaaja

For me it was a curse I was being a whore. But it had to be oral sex because I was using condoms someone knew and willingly gave it to me. It woke me up big time. But it doesn't stop men from wanting me. They still be looking for this punna. Lol 🤣😆 but seriously 😒 I hate it but it's life.