just found out i have HSV. turns out promiscuity comes with risk, who knew! no symptoms, i went and got an STD test on monday and that's how i found out. last time i got tested, in late march, they didn't test for HSV so i got my clean sheet back and was like, great. could have gotten it before then, no way to know. but pretty sure it was in the past few months.
been reading a lot about it over the past couple hours, after my initial heart-falling-through-the-floor feeling. it turns out that the stigma around it is ridiculous. 1/5 of the people in the world have the type i have. 2/3 (!) have the other type. that's fucking common! also, it's really easy to get, like chickenpox and shingles, which it's related to. and even though it's incurable, it's actually not that bad for most people. the main bad thing that can happen is a woman getting an outbreak when she's late in pregnancy. but like i said, i'm asymptomatic; outbreaks are apparently unpleasant at worst for almost everyone who gets them and they get milder over time.
so i've gone from "FUCK" to "fuck" to "what does this mean?" to "oh, okay" in a few hours.
still, it does mean making some awkward phone calls, and a lifetime of having to talk about it with anyone i think i might be having sex with soon. i've only had unprotected sex with one person this year, but she's the one i'm most dreading talking to because she did NOT take it well when i broke things off with her a couple of weeks ago. on the other hand, she works in reproductive health so she's likeliest to understand what it actually means to have it. and anyway condoms don't reduce risk by that much.
on the plus side, i for sure don't have any other STDs. also knowing is better than not knowing. and it's good to learn about something that's so stigmatized for basically no reason.
