**I’m Plastic-Durian8264, and I don’t know who I am without this virus.**

I used to think that sex was a secret I could hold in the palm of my hand.
Something soft and electric, just for me.
A private kind of power — quiet but strong, like a secret I chose to share only when I wanted to. I wasn’t reckless. I wasn’t naive. I was 17, in love — or what I thought was love — and full of that stubborn teenage faith that everything would just work itself out. That as long as I believed in the goodness of what I was doing, nothing bad could come of it.

But then came the diagnosis.
Three letters. **HPV.**
And suddenly, that soft power turned into something jagged. Unpredictable. Dangerous.

Everything I thought I knew about sex, love, and even myself cracked open.
It wasn’t just a virus. It was a quiet unraveling.
Of trust.
Of desire.
Of feeling safe in my own skin.

I stopped feeling like a girl in love.
I started feeling like a warning label. A risk. A statistic.
I didn't want to be touched — not even by someone who said they loved me. Not even by myself.

And the worst part? The silence. The way no one talks about this.
HPV doesn’t come with a support group. It comes with shame.
It comes with “You should’ve known better.”
It comes with late-night Google spirals and hiding the wart cream in the back of your drawer so no one finds it.

Since that day, nothing has felt normal.
I’ve been trying to stitch myself back together — but some days, I still miss the girl who believed sex was hers to hold.

## **What If I’m Not Clean Anymore? What If I Never Was?**

The moment they said it — **“You have HPV”** — time didn’t slow down. It shattered.
I don’t remember what the nurse said after. I just remember the buzzing in my ears and the feeling that my body suddenly wasn’t mine anymore. That it had turned into a warning label. A cautionary tale. Something people whispered about, not something people loved.

The panic came quickly. I couldn’t stop refreshing WebMD, Reddit threads, forums filled with women sobbing into their keyboards. Each new page told me I wasn’t alone, but also confirmed my worst fear: **there’s no cure**. I kept reading anyway. Looking for one sentence that might undo what I’d just heard.

But the hardest part? I had to tell my mom.
I was 17. Still under her roof. Still her "good daughter." I thought maybe she’d hold me, tell me it was okay, that I wasn’t dirty.
Instead, she sat still. Frozen. Like I had just told her I’d killed someone.

**In my culture, this isn’t just a virus. It’s a verdict.**
You’re either pure or you’re not.
And suddenly I wasn’t.
She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t cry. She just… went silent. And in that silence, I heard every version of the word *disappointment*. Her quiet wasn’t kindness — it was grief.

And ever since, I’ve been carrying that silence in my chest like a second heartbeat.

## **God, Guilt, and Genital Warts**

I blamed myself.
I still do, most days. It’s quiet, but constant — like a hum under my skin.

Maybe it’s the religious guilt, the way I was raised to believe that a “good girl” waits. That her body is a temple and that anything less than purity is shame.
Maybe it was that night — just one night — where I didn’t insist on protection. Where I let trust override fear, and closeness override caution.

Or maybe it’s just that blaming myself feels easier than facing the truth:
That viruses don’t care who you love.
That you can do “everything right” and still carry something you never asked for.
That sometimes, your body becomes a battlefield without your consent.

And even now, I still ask myself:
What if I had just been stronger?
Smarter?
Cleaner?

I don’t blame him.
I wish I did.
Because then maybe I could be angry instead of ashamed.
But the truth is, it wasn’t just his hands on my skin that night — it was my own permission. And that’s the part that haunts me the most.

Now, it’s my body that crossed a line in my own mind.
And I’m the one who wakes up every day trying to forgive myself for something I can’t take back.

## **What Happens When Love Can’t Reach the Parts That Hurt?**

My boyfriend didn’t leave.
He stayed. He’s kind. He’s gentle. He’s patient in all the ways I didn’t expect someone to be when I told him what was happening to my body.

We use protection. He washes up. He checks in.
He treats me like I’m still whole. But I don’t feel whole.

And I flinch when he touches me.
Not because he’s done anything wrong — but because my skin doesn’t feel like mine anymore. Especially *there*.
After my first electrocautery, the part of me that once held desire now only holds memory — of white sheets, sterile gloves, the smell of burning flesh. I remember the sting, the heat, the numbness that wasn’t nearly numb enough.

So I stopped accepting his touch.
Not out of anger, not even out of fear — just out of shame. I couldn’t bear the idea of him seeing that part of me again, knowing what it’s been through. What it looks like now.
I didn’t know how to say: *Please love me, but not that part. Not yet.*
I didn’t know how to ask him to wait — not for healing, but for me to feel human again.

He’s still here.
But sometimes I wonder if *I* am.

I don’t know how to let him love me when I feel like I’ve become... untouchable.

## **The Quiet Panic No One Sees**

I’ve Googled this virus more than I’ve texted my friends.

I don’t even scroll for answers anymore — I spiral.
One second I’m checking a simple symptom, and the next I’m buried in Reddit confessionals, obscure medical studies, and forum comments from women ten years into this diagnosis still asking if their sex life will ever feel safe again. Still asking if the shame ever leaves.

I’ve had full-blown panic attacks in class.
Not the dramatic kind that gets noticed. The quiet kind. The kind where your throat starts closing in, your chest starts buzzing, and your brain screams while your face stays still. You look fine. You’re not.

And the worst part is how normal you’re supposed to look while you’re breaking inside.

I’ve lost hours. Days.
To that dark loop of *what if this never goes away?*
What if I’m always the girl who got “dirty”?
What if this is my fault and also my forever?

In my culture, we don’t talk about things like this.
We pretend bodies are either pure or ruined, and there’s no in between.
There are no school health talks. No honest posters in clinics. Just whispers, judgment, and enough silence to drown in.

Even when my friends try to be supportive, I can feel it — that distance.
They don’t know what it’s like to feel your own body turn against you.
To carry something invisible that makes you feel marked.
To keep showing up like nothing’s wrong while your body becomes a quiet battlefield.

I smile. I laugh. I post.
And still — underneath it all — I am grieving a version of myself that didn’t carry this virus.
A version who trusted her own body.
A version who didn’t flinch at the word *sex*.
A version I’m not sure how to get back to.

But I’m trying.
Even if no one sees the panic — I’m still here. Still surviving it.

## **Rebuilding Myself (or Trying To)**

I wish I could end this with a clean line. A triumph. A healing arc.
But I can’t.
Not yet.
I haven’t healed. I’m still learning how to carry this virus without letting it swallow me. I’m still waking up some mornings feeling like I’ve ruined something — my body, my worth, my chance at a soft and simple kind of love.

I’m 18.
This is supposed to be the age of becoming. Of testing limits. Of saying yes to the world, even if it bites back sometimes.
But instead, I’m navigating doctor visits, viral loads, and a shame that feels ancient — like it’s been passed down through generations of silence.

And yet, something strange has started to grow inside all that pain.
Curiosity.
Anger. A flicker of purpose.

I’ve started reading about virology.
Not just late-night doomscrolling. I mean really reading. Scientific papers. HPV strains. Immune response. I want to understand this virus because understanding gives me power. Because if I can name it, learn its patterns, and see its shape clearly — then maybe it won’t feel so monstrous. Maybe it won’t feel like it owns me.

But more than that, I want to use what I learn.
I want to speak for the girls like me — young, scared, dismissed.
I want to walk into clinics one day as a professional who won’t flinch at a patient’s shame. I want to be the kind of person I didn’t meet when I needed her most.

Girls like me deserve care without cruelty.
We deserve doctors who won’t ask how many people we’ve been with before checking if we’re okay.
We deserve to know our bodies aren’t ruined.
We deserve to be handed facts, not fear.

I used to think I was weak for breaking.
Now I know — sometimes you have to break to know what you’re made of.
And I’m made of something fierce.

I haven’t rebuilt all the way.
But I’m not where I started either.
I’m here. I’m learning. I’m trying.

And maybe that’s what survival looks like right now.

## **The Future Is a Soft Maybe**

I don’t have a five-year plan anymore.
Not because I’ve stopped dreaming — but because everything feels like a maybe now.
A soft, tender maybe.

Maybe I’ll fall in love again — really, truly.
The kind where you don’t flinch when someone reaches for your body. The kind where you don’t feel like you have to explain what’s wrong with you before you even take off your clothes.

Maybe I’ll have the kind of sex I used to imagine.
Not just safe, but free. The wild kind. The laughing kind. The kind where you feel chosen, not tolerated. Where I don’t feel like I’m constantly managing risk, shame, and body memories all at once.

Maybe I’ll be able to say “I have HPV” without my throat tightening.
Maybe one day I won’t feel like I have to prove I’m still worthy of love after saying it.

I want all of that.
But I also know the truth: healing is not linear.
Some days I still spiral. Some days I still ache.
But some days... I don’t.
Some days I feel a little more like myself.

And maybe — that's the most radical part of all this.
That I didn’t let it harden me. That I didn’t let shame swallow me whole. That even when I felt like my body had betrayed me, I didn’t betray myself.

I’m still here.
Still reaching.
Still choosing to believe that this body — this virus-marked, scar-lined, learning-to-trust-again body — deserves good things.

Even if it takes years.
Even if I still don’t fully believe it yet.

The future is a soft maybe.
But it’s mine.
And I’m not giving up on it.
Not yet.
Not ever.

**Also Read: 25-year-old male's** [**<u>personal HIV story</u>**](https://www.shamelesspath.com/blog/std-stories/safe-sex-hiv-stigma-turkey)

<p>I was 17 when I was diagnosed with HPV, and nothing felt safe after that — not my body, not my sense of self, not even love.&nbsp;</p>

I Survived His Violence — Then I Survived His Virus

I was 17 when I was diagnosed with HPV, and nothing felt safe after that — not my body, not my sense of self, not even love. 