Brynn2012

I called the office four days later to inquire, a nurse found 2/3 of my results…said my blood came back negative and one of my cultures came back negative, but we were waiting on one more. I asked if that meant I was free of ailments…If my blood is “clean”..nothing could be hiding right? I was ready to change my whole life, this vicious cycle of mine. I told “him” that I was clean and he said I shouldn’t have worried and whatnot, later that night he decided to tell me he wasn’t “feeling” it (building a relationship with me). That there wasn’t any “spark”…It was a complete 180..almost like he waited for me to “get better” so he could leave. I chalked it up to other things going on in his life, but you know..the way he spoke to me-there is no remedy for being an asshole. I don’t handle rejection well, especially when it goes against all prior events…no, I’m not talking about sex, I mean..emotionally..as friends..we connected. This upset me enough to rehash it again the next day, It didn’t fix anything or go anywhere..so I let it go for that moment. June 5th, I go to the cheesecake factory with my coworker friends-one of them who knows. My phone is always, always on silent…but I managed to peer down right as I was receiving a call from the gynecologist. The doctor was on the phone-thats never a good sign, and she told me that my culture tested positive for herpes, that it wasn’t in my blood because I had been exposed to it so recently. You could tell she knew what this meant for me, I was already in a fragile state of mind. I lost it. I cried and had a meltdown at the table, had to tell my other friend and no one could finish their lunch…it was a sad sight. I texted him and told him, he was very unsettled by it…said if he’s the one who gave it to me he’s the “biggest piece of shit” ever…I even called him crying right when I left the restaurant. And when I went to work that night…you knew I was “done” for awhile. I worked with him and the original friend who knew…they let me go home first and since I was housesitting for my mom’s friends, the guy ended up coming over after I asked him to stay with me. He cuddled up to me and I cried when he told me that if it isn’t a “parade”..if theres not that “it factor” he isn’t interested…it felt like he cared about me…but was there out of pity. I exclaimed that I was sorry I wasn’t who he thought I was, and began to feel like no one would ever love me. They were all just afraid I was going to kill myself, and even my greatest friend of 8 years couldn’t manage to respond to a text or give me an unsolicited call. I don’t believe in suicide, but I did think about it for whatever reason. I talked to him every day. He ended up getting tested 3 days later. So while we waited… I hounded exes, I drank excessively (I don’t drink), and I tried to make sense as to why this had to happen to me..as if I’m supposed to be different. He was supportive some of the time, aggressive and irritated a portion of the time..but overall I could tell he felt sorry for me…though, I felt I needed him. I went to the gynecologist and was told I had HSV1, all of my other partners either proved or said they were negative..I only asked the most recent and I can count my sex partners on one hand. Said guy found out that he is positive for HSV1…he gets ulcers inside his mouth, probably had cold sores as a kid and the reason no one has come to the table to inform him is because they didn’t have severe symptoms or didn’t get it. Hell, maybe the virus has been dormant and I just got lucky. He didn’t know, I never blew up on him…because how could I if he truly wasn’t aware? If you know..well then you’re another being entirely. He apologized for “ruining [my] life” and said he felt lower than low for infecting me. I was there for him during the initial shock but warned him that I would want to take a break from talking. No one has the power to ruin my life but myself…though it all felt much more dramatic at the time. I didn’t speak to him for a day and then it felt like he was the only one I could connect to…slowly I spiraled and my wallowing got worse. I quit the job after managers tried to get involved and figure out what was wrong with me, they knew someone else was involved but all they cared about was whether or not I was going to sue them. Equally as slowly, the guy stopped returning my texts..Id get one for every four I sent…I secretly resented him and he didn’t like how I was processing things. This guy was there for me for weeks and i don’t know if it was the guilt or what…but he started to shut down on me. A few days ago I asked him if he was done with me…all he could say was that it was depressing every time we talked and he doesn’t like that i want to wallow in my emotions…I’m sorry we handle things differently? He asked if I wanted to go to lunch right before all of this..and I felt like a dog that never leaves the backyard..like he was doing all of this because he felt like he should. We talked about the future..because OF COURSE crazy me still likes this man, and he said that if something happened in the future he wouldn’t stop it, that its not all in my head. So today is the first day I’ve gotten myself together. I changed my cellphone number-he did not get it and I cut off my friend of eight years. This is 70% herpes strife and 30% my own sadness. That job was supposed to be my fresh start, and even after everything I’m still not done with that person..he doesn’t have my number for now, but I’m going to want to see him again..when I feel better. I told him that maybe this will be a good thing for me…force me to slow things down and change my ways. That maybe I served a greater purpose by bringing him up to speed on his own health..he said he believed that we were bound to each other in more ways than one, that he hopes we haven’t seen the last of each other. What a piece of shit. Please tell me why these people handled me in this manner-did I ask for this in some weird way? I'm so lost.

I was diagnosed with genital HSV1, June 5th of this year, but the story starts about two years prior. I lost my virginity to a long-time “friend” at eighteen, I can’t even call him a friend-he was just THAT guy who you’ve known and have been infatuated with for so long that you just end up…giving it to him. Well, that lasted about a week before I recognized this was either going to go somewhere or it wasn’t; it did not. Ever since that rejection, I never felt the same…two weeks later I jumped into bed with one of my coworkers who was eight years my senior, just to dull the ache in my head. It made me feel alive to drive out to his place in the middle of the night, to participate in something that was always so separate from myself. That lasted for a year and a half, even after I dropped out of college. I was just jumping from bad situations to better and then back down to the worst, this has been my cycle for the past two years. Though, it’s not all doom and gloom-I have a positive cyclical life, and I know how to rebuild. The relevant point of this story occurs last month, when I started my new job. Coworkers have seemed to become an “issue” for me, so when I took the position I vowed not to even go out “one on one” with a male coworker. Well, one of the many broke me down-he was..interesting, attractive but not overwhelmingly so and at the very least he was persistent about being my friend. After texting back and forth and seeing each other at work 4 days out of the week…I don’t know how it happened, but he got to me. He had already admitted that he had a thing for me and that stroked my ego enough to return the favor. I even consulted with our friends (we had similar taste in people) and they reassured me that he was a good guy and they’d never seen him interested in someone (at work) this way. I decided to give him a chance. I slept with him twice. Not as soon as we hung out, but soon after the first time. It’s like having a secret you don’t have to carry around with you, it follows you around like a pair of eyes while you go on doing your job. Then, I get sick. Two days after I had sex with him I experienced awful UTI symptoms, swollen glands-it felt like I had a huge abnormal growth, fever, and to top it off-I could barely eat. I called out of work for two days and had a bizarre fear that this could be more than mono or some other virus…I knew he had gotten me sick somehow. So I go to the doctor and I set a separate gynecologist appointment-ironically I had just been there with regard to depression. I tested negatively for any real sickness and positive for a UTI. I was partially relieved but there was still no explanation for what was wrong. After the UTI symptoms didn’t go away, I noticed three pimple looking features on my outer labia…I knew I had a STD now, I was anxious to find out which one and how we could cure it. Meanwhile, I’m still keeping in touch with this guy and we’re seeing each other. I did bring it up to him for the second time because I already asked him about being tested before we slept together. This time he elaborated and said he hadn’t been with someone since July-that he did a full blood panel and a culture swab-negative, he said I was worrying for nothing. Well, I had to disagree when the gynecologist warned me that I didn’t look like a “normal case of herpes” but we would soon find out. I started crying with my feet still in the stirrups, I condemned myself that I had it the moment she said the word. I was convinced I was going to come into the office, they’d tell my I had Chlamydia or another STI, set me up with a week of medication or a shot and I could be careful next time. Now I asked him if he had ever been tested for herpes. I was baffled by how much I didn’t know-I didn’t know you had to ask to be tested for it, I thought it was included and I had suspicion of how someone could “not know” they had it. He told me that he was…but I knew he didn’t get tested for it..he thought he did, but he didn’t because if I didn’t ask to be tested for herpes..so theres no way he did, I am smarter than he is. There was no coincidence that I got so violently sick after sleeping with him, but I waited for my results.