It doesn’t look like what everyone thinks it looks like. Everyone thinks that someone is going to look sickly, look like they are dying, real thin, and I am not going to say that that’s not how someone who dies with AIDS ends up because they do, but that doesn’t mean that someone who has AIDS is always going to look that way.
I am a woman who has been diagnosed with AIDS for 22 years and when I tell people that, there are some people when they look at me say, “Oh my God, you’ve got AIDS? You don’t look like it.” Okay, what does it look like? You know, and when they describe it, it’s always someone who is real thin and frail and dying. Well, I am not dying.
So, you know, people need to understand that it could be their best friend; it could be a relative; it could be someone that is over 400 pounds, and they would not have any idea that they are positive.