Mga Batang Poz

It probably took me a week or so to finish this book. I was excited at first but in the end, I did not like it. This book told the lives of teens living with HIV and discussed about the virus together with a bit about AIDS -- the reason why I bought it. It talked about life of PLHIV or Persons Living with HIV.

However, I feel that it missed the one thing which I think is important in dealing and understanding HIV -- the window period. Not a part of this book mentioned about it. It takes 10 days to three months to show that someone is Poz (positive) or reactive. Ergo, if you had sex with someone who is Poz and you get tested tomorrow, it still might be negative or non-reactive.

At the beginning, I was thinking that maybe, I was comparing this one to Orosa-Nakpil Malate, a novel I read back in college that also talked about HIV and AIDS. So I stopped thinking about Orosa and focused on this. The ending made me cringe. I wonder why HIV was used to lie. It made me go back to Orosa. Despite my fondness of the novel, I felt it was written well and I liked how the story unfolded, it struck me, just now, that it also used HIV as a revenge. And that sucks.

Hindi ko alam kung gaya na lang ba ako ng iba na kada kibot, gusto na lang ng positive representation because these media have the power, when in fact, the world doesnt't really revolve that way. Slam!