Cork man: My ‘secret’ life as a man living with HIV

IN my new book, I focus on the mental, emotional, psychological and even physical effects on a person who is living with a secret.

It is not an autobiography, it is a memoir, so it is not a full account of my life.

The book is called My Secret Life, and was published this week. A book launch will follow on April 17 in Cork City Library at 6.30pm.

I am 66-year-old queer man living with HIV.

I am open, out and visible about my sexuality and my HIV status. I am an activist and advocate on behalf of people living with HIV.

I was born in Cork city in 1957 and am very comfortable in my sexuality, but I was not always like this.

As I am a HIV activist, I am always asked what it was like in the 1980s, when HIV and Aids emerged in the public sphere.

I have given many talks, have been on local and national radio and newspapers, talking about HIV in the eighties, and what it is like now.

One of the main barriers to ending HIV today is the stigma that surrounds it. People are living long and healthy lives with it now, but many are living with a secret. They keep their HIV to themselves, and I know the effects of that.

I decided the best way to highlight issues about HIV in Ireland today would be to write my story.

I needed to put how I dealt with my HIV into some kind of context.

I grew up in a very different Ireland from the one I am living in today. I grew up with a secret, a secret that almost killed me. How I survived and overcame the effects of living with the secret of my sexuality to become the out queer man I am today needed to be told, as the experience really influenced how I dealt with my HIV.

When I was diagnosed with HIV in 2007, I was an out queer man very active in the Gay community in Cork. I was a volunteer with a gay phone helpline, and the Gay Men’s Health Project in Cork.

It had taken me a long time to get to where I was in 2007.

I was now faced with a choice. I could retreat into a HIV closet, just like the closet I grew up in when I was keeping my sexuality a secret.

I had worked too hard and too long to ever go back in, as it were.

That is why I became out, visible and vocal about living with HIV.

The book is really a story of two parts.

The first is a very sad, dark read. Because of the very nature of the subject, it had to be.

But the second part is full of hope and light.

It is one person’s story, but I believe many people will be able to relate and identify with it.

I hope my story will inspire people living in fear to see that there is hope. There is a way that they too can come to live a fully open, authentic, life - free from the fear that comes from living with a secret.

The cover design of the book is one I thought of myself. It is an old-fashioned half door. The bottom half is coloured black and closed. This represents my early life. The top half is open with the light shining out. This is how I think of my life.

It is a story of coming out of the dark into the light and freedom. The freedom that came when I stopped living a secret life.