I leaned back in the gynecologist’s chair, my fists clenched, while my doctor peered between my legs.
For the previous few days, I’d been experiencing pain. My first thought was that I’d torn something during sex, but then little sores began appearing, first slowly, then all at once, on my labia. As it got worse, a ball of dread started to form in the pit of my stomach. Now, as I gazed at the white ceiling of the doctor’s office, I said a silent prayer to whatever god might be listening that it wasn’t what I feared. But before I could even get to bargaining with the imaginary deity, my gyno popped back up.
“Yes, it’s herpes,” she told me matter-of-factly, pulling off her gloves and giving me a look of practiced, clinical sympathy. She’d been down there all of five seconds.
The words hit me like a punch in the stomach. I felt all the blood drain from my face and the air seep out of my lungs. Until that moment, I had still hoped it was something else. In fact, I reasoned, it had to be something else. Because for my entire adult life I’d been a veritable sexual health crusader.
The first time I ever had unprotected sex, with my second-ever sexual partner, I insisted we both get tested first. Later, when I had other partners, I initiated in-depth conversations about our respective sexual histories before we did anything sexual, and even then it was always with protection.
I would get full blood and urine tests every six months, even if my number of sexual partners was modest. Friends’ tales of “risky” sex terrified me and I advocated for condom use and regular testing within my social circle. I was by far the most careful person I knew, verging on paranoid.
But none of that mattered, apparently. Because I had still contracted herpes.
In the week that followed my diagnosis, things only got worse. The sores were excruciating — I nearly fainted while urinating, from the searing pain of acid on open wounds. I was terrified to drink water because it would make me pee, and terrified not to because it would be more acidic when I did.
On top of that, I had a fever that swung me from shivering to sweating, my head throbbed with a piercing headache, and sharp pains shot through my abdomen. I couldn’t walk for a week, only shuffle, groaning and gasping, from my bed to the bathroom and back again.
What’s worse, I had to visit two other doctors during that time for various reasons. One scoffed at my pain as she judgmentally wrote me a doctor’s note to relieve me from work that week. The other shamed me for not using a condom, even though it was with my long-term partner who had come back negative on all his STI tests. The self-respect I’d managed to cling onto after my diagnosis was crushed by the people who were supposed to help me through.
And all that week, my mind was racing. In my best moments, my years of sexual health education bolstered me. I told myself it was nothing but a numbers game. I told myself that herpes was effectively just a skin condition. I told myself it wasn’t a big deal.
But as I lay there, wracked with pain, other thoughts crept in too. I tortured myself trying to figure out where I had gone wrong, who I could have contracted it from. I ran over every sexual encounter I’d ever had, knowing that the virus can lie dormant for years before an outbreak occurs. I guiltily made a list of people I should text, just in case I’d unknowingly passed it onto them. In my darkest moments, I convinced myself no one would ever sleep with me again. And this thought stuck around.
Long after my first outbreak had passed and I was no longer afraid to go to the toilet, I was still scared of the moment I would have to disclose my status to a new sexual partner. So I did some reading.
Some of what I found was extremely reassuring. For example, I learned there are about half a billion people worldwide with HSV-2 — the virus that is mostly responsible for genital herpes. I also learned that genital and oral herpes are more or less interchangeable — that is to say, you can get genital herpes from contact with a cold sore and vice versa.
And I learned that most people who have the virus don’t even know it — herpes isn’t included on standard STI tests and some people have symptoms so mild they don’t even notice. Others have no symptoms at all.
And then, there was some stuff that made me feel even worse. The scariest fact was that the herpes simplex virus can be transmitted even when you don’t have any symptoms. Granted, it’s highly unlikely, but there is a chance. And that chance sent me into an anxiety tailspin. It convinced me, once again, that I may as well just join a nunnery because I was definitely not getting laid ever again.
But when my best friend and I started flirting about six months later, a small glimmer of hope shone into the cloister. There’d been unspoken chemistry between us since the first day we met and I figured that if anyone would be understanding about it, it would be him. So I took the risk.
“There’s something I need to bring up if we’re thinking of sleeping together,” I told him over the phone one night.
He listened as I told him about my herpes diagnosis, accompanied by heavy reassurance that it would be fine if he wasn’t comfortable with the risk. I could hear him smiling over the phone as he thanked me for my honesty and then disclosed some of his own run-ins with STIs. In the end, we had a wonderful whirlwind fling — with all the necessary precautions, of course.
He wasn’t the only one that showed that level of grace. Over the next few years, each and every partner I had that conversation with was remarkably compassionate. Some told me they’d dealt with this same thing before, others asked non-judgmental questions with genuine curiosity. A few decided the risk of contraction wasn’t something they were comfortable with and in the end chose against genital contact. But that didn’t stop us from enjoying each other in less risky ways.
Despite all this, though, I still got that ball of dread in the pit of my stomach every time I had to say those three words: “I have herpes.” The anxiety never quite went away
One day, about two years after I was diagnosed, I found myself in a monogamous relationship and, to my relief, the next five years passed without me having to deal with that particular challenge. My partner was OK with the risk, and I hadn’t had any outbreaks since the first few months after my diagnosis. The chance of transmission was close to zero and herpes was something I barely ever thought about.
I had known forever that I was bisexual but it wasn’t something I’d explored much, even within what had become a monogamish relationship in the meantime. So when I met Cara* — someone I was immediately attracted to — I was excited.
We hit it off, flirting shamelessly. And soon enough, that old familiar ball of dread found its way into my stomach. I was painfully aware of all the weight, all the stigma still associated with herpes. I was bracing myself for rejection, preparing for the possible end to what had been a lovely queer-affirming flirtationship.
But Cara’s response was more than I could have possibly hoped for. Like my other partners had, she approached my revelation with kindness and grace. And she did something else — she showed me that she had put as much effort into safer sex education as I had.
I hadn’t realized it until that moment, but I’d been carrying an enormous burden on my shoulders — the burden of being the most informed person in any of my partnerships. That’s not an unfair expectation — I’m the one with the virus after all. But knowing that Cara had done her own homework and was already educated on herpes was a revelation.
She told me a former partner had also had herpes, that she was already well aware of the risks and that oral herpes actually worried her more, since people were much less careful about it. I felt all the muscles in my body relax, knowing that I didn’t have to carry the full weight of this STI alone.
Seven years after my first outbreak, I still don’t know who I got herpes from. I don’t even know when. But I do know that, short of committing myself to celibacy, there was nothing more I could have done. In the end, it was just bad luck.
Thankfully, though, that bad luck isn’t nearly as terrible as it’s made out to be. Time and time again the people in my life have been gracious, understanding and non-judgmental. And in the case of Cara, they’ve even helped share the burden of being informed on sexual health.
I guess I’m not bound for the nunnery after all.
*Names have been changed to protect individuals’ privacy.
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