Two Years Ago Today I Contracted Genital HSV-1
- Rafaella Gunz
- Jul 13, 2017
- 2 min read
July 13th, 2017
Two years ago today I contracted genital HSV-1. I got it from a hot guy on a Tinder date gone wrong. The sex was incredible, but he ended up being a fuckboy.
Upon my diagnosis, I thought it was the end of the world - that no one would ever date me again, that I was disgusting, tainted, and tarnished. It didn’t help that one of my oldest friends ostracized me upon learning about my diagnosis either.
But all those fears turned out to be very, very untrue. I'm now in an 18-month-long relationship with the love of my life. We have an adorable puppy and live together in Manhattan. I graduated college and I get to do what I love doing for a living; I’m writing about LGBTQ+ and feminist issues. And I've never even had so much as a second herpes outbreak.
Sex education in the US is severely lacking. I've learned more about STIs in my two years living with one than I did from all of the science and health classes I had taken in high school. Did you know two-thirds of the world's population has HSV-1 and one in six Americans has HSV-2? Did you know the stigma surrounding herpes only began in the 1980s when the first antiviral drug was made available to treat it? The whole fear surrounding herpes was invented by Big Pharma to sell more pills. People have lived with the benign virus for centuries before that.
So if you find out you have herpes, please don't freak out. Life goes on. Mine did.
Rafaella Gunz
Rafaella is a graduate of The New School in NYC, where she majored in journalism and minored in gender studies. She's passionate about feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, combatting online harassment, and ending the stigmas surrounding mental illness and STIs. Visit her website: ellagunz.com
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