My discovery story is as ordinary as they come. Girl meets boy, boy and girl click, boy and girl hook up, girl loses interest in boy. A few days later, I’m sitting at my desk rolling my eyes at the itching going on in my nether regions. Of course I’d get a yeast infection during one of the busiest weeks of my life at work. I wasn’t afraid of contracting STI’s from this guy. We had that conversation talking about whether we were clean. We showed each other our latest results. We were good to go. And we did.
A few days went by and the itching was moving from itching to painful. I noticed an ingrown hair that turned into 2 or 3 ingrown hairs and that’s when I got nervous. I finally told myself that the only way I’d be able to free myself from the excessive anxiety was by going and getting checked out. So with my anxiety reeling, I went to a local urgent care. I recounted my story and underwent an examination to find that I was having my first genital herpes outbreak. Back the fuck up.. what? My recent test results were clear. I had nothing. Clean slate.
I immediately started crying. All of the social stigma and flashes of sex ed in middle school and high school flooded my mind. I couldn’t face the news alone so I texted by best friend group chat that included my roommate and our other best friend. My roommate told me to come home and that I wasn’t in this alone. Our other best friend made an ice-cream run and showed up at our front door with unconditional love and support. I told my two best friends from home, 2000 miles away, and they reassured me that it was no big deal, and that I was loved no matter what. When I got home, I lost it. I immediately began spewing self hate. Both of them talked me down. One of them told me she had HPV, and the other told me she knew plenty of people with gHSV and it wasn’t a big deal. I sulked for a moment wondering if this was something I was going to tell my mom - someone that I told everything to.
I decided yes. I was going to. She was a nurse. She saw this all the time. I had never been more afraid of telling anyone anything in my life. I texted her a simple, “I found out I’m having my first herpes outbreak..” and pressed send, a lump in my throat all the way. Not even a minute later I had a response of her saying, “Ehh, welcome to the world! You’re not special.” I immediately started laughing. Leave it up to my mom to take something traumatic to me to find a way to tell me I’m not special - something we always joke about all the time. I immediately had such a sense of relief come over me and I felt calmer about it as my friends and I began looking up as much as we could about it. I told the three people I was closest to about it and was met with no judgement, no bias, no stigma. I wasn’t alone. But then came the social stuff.
Initially I was upset at said boy. Did he lie to me? I should have waited to text him but in a rage, I told him he lied to me and that he gave me herpes. He was immediately horrified. He swore up and down he was clean. He had never, ever had anything of the sort happen to him.. not even a cold sore.. except all of his siblings. He was super supportive and very apologetic. It dawned on us that even though he himself had never had symptoms of anything, that it was very possible he could be exposed to it, and he could be a carrier, but had never had an outbreak. I told him I wasn’t upset with him. How could I be pissed at someone who doesn’t even know themselves that they have it? He was just as scared as I was when I found out.
I found out the strain a few days later. HSV1 - which means it was very likely transmitted to me through oral sex. Prior to him, I had one other partner that it could have been transmitted through. I texted him - and again was met with someone completely unbiased, understanding, and supportive. He thanked me for telling him - even though we both agreed he most likely wasn’t at risk of contracting it from me, there could have been a chance I contracted it from him but he had also never had outbreaks of any sort. We had a long talk about it where he asked me if there was anything he could do for me as he showed empathy toward what I was going through. I appreciated that.
It took just a few days for my outbreak to go away once I got on a dose of Acyclovir. As it began clearing up, I told my friends I would never take “wiping normal” for granted again, and they told me we should celebrate the survival of my first outbreak. My mom texted me every day for status updates. When I told her it was gone, she sent a confetti text with “Congratulations! I have a gift coming for you in the mail because I love you!” Leave it to my weird people to make this something to celebrate, and to make it feel so normal.
I feel like I was lucky in my experience. I didn’t have to go through my first outbreak scared and alone. Instead, they held my hand, offered encouraging words, and helped me find out everything we could about the virus and the treatments out there. A few days later, one of the best friends from back home texted telling me everything she educated herself on regarding the virus and how she thought it was so unreal how stigmatized it was. I sent a shrug emoji and said, “If anything, it’s more incentive to work out, eat better, and manage my stress levels healthier to prevent more outbreaks.” Our other friend chimed in with, “And it’ll be a great filter to find out what dudes are douches immediately,” which I hadn’t even originally thought of but DAMN, she’s right.
For You
For anyone reading this, I want you to know it’s not the end of the world that you have gHSV of either type, or even oHSV. You were simply exposed to a virus. Sometimes it gets uncomfortable. But it doesn’t make you dirty or immoral. It makes you a human being. Human beings get sick. Kids run around with their crusty selves sporting cold sores all the time and no one bats an eye. The major right of passage in high school was Mono which is caused by Epstein-Barr. Once you’re exposed to that virus, it lays dormant in you forever - but very rarely it can re-awaken and you can shed that virus. HSV is the same, it’s just been used in fear mongering abstinence based sexual education teachings in the American school system for years. If anything, having HSV in any form makes you MORE normal than those who don’t have it at this point.There are treatments available to suppress the virus and make it harder to transmit. That can keep you from ever having an outbreak. You can have a normal sex life, and dating life. Carrying a virus doesn’t make you unworthy of love, and diminish your worth at all. Period.I really just want to leave you with this - if someone is willing to eat your ass but unwilling to be with you after you disclose your status and educate them on your treatment, and how you can protect them, fuck ‘em (not literally). They’re not worth your time.. and they’re going to end up getting it from the next person anyway.
