He never thought this would happen after his #HIV diagnosis…
Dorian Klemensine joins Karl Schmid on a brand new +Talk set to talk about how his life opened up in ways he never even imagined from embracing his diagnosis.
DORIAN
With all those comments and seeing that how much support from people that you don’t even know really makes you feel like, “Okay, maybe, maybe I can do this.”
KARL
Hello there. Welcome to Plus Talk on Plus Life, where we’re all about turning positive into a plus. So you get your HIV diagnosis, what’s the first thing you do? TikTok, perhaps? Well maybe it wasn’t the first thing you did but my guest today, Dorian Klemensine is joining us, and you did use TikTok to talk about your HIV status pretty quick into the game, didn’t you?
DORIAN
Yeah, I did, and it was not all my intention whatsoever. Like it kind of just happened by itself type of thing. I got my diagnosis and it kind of put me in a really, really dark like space and while I was coming out of it, it kind of felt maybe like it’s own self-help type of thing. I made a reaction video to another user on TikTok who was crying and said they found their diagnosis and it just hit home for me, because everything that that user put in their video looked very similar to mine, and it just it made me feel super sad, ’cause when I found my diagnosis, I was all by myself in my room, miles away from family, and it just crushed me. I felt very isolated, very alone, and I didn’t want this person to feel that, just because we’re living the very similar situations, I didn’t want them to feel like they had nobody in their corner, so I made my reaction to them, and no means was meant to be what has become now with the views and the comments and all these things. It was so solely meant to be a let me reach out to this person and tell them, “Hey you can do this, I can do this. We can lean on each other and we can get through this. This is something that we can do together,” and it’s just blown up to something that I could, I had no idea it was going to. I still get comments or people reaching out to me. Honestly, every single day, someone’s saying that they’re scared about their diagnosis, they’re worried about this or with that, and I just sit down and be like, “Hey this is what’s happening, da da da” and just kind of be like a listening heart kind of to understand where they’re coming from, hear their story, and just really try to be someone in their corner for this scary moment.
KARL
Yeah, I mean, look it’s an incredibly personal journey that we all go through and go on rather when we’re diagnosed. Have you found that the positive feedback at least that you’ve received from online, pardon the pun, in a way has been helpful to you in coming to terms with your own diagnosis? You know, those positive messages from people online saying, “Hey, you got this!” Just, much like you’ve done for the person whose video you were reacting to. How much has that feedback from the online community do you think helped get you to where you are today 12 months on?
DORIAN
Oh, tremendously. I know it sounds, it sounds silly like “Oh, how can like a little comment from somebody that you never know make you feel better?” but it honestly had, because my diagnosis, after I found out it put me in such a dark place, like I didn’t want to continue. I know it was super grim, but I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to continue whatsoever. I wanted just to be like, “You know what, this is me this is it for me,” but with the help of like friends and family, and then with all those comments and seeing that how much support from people that you don’t even know really makes you feel like, “Okay, maybe I can do this. Maybe I can muster up the strength.” And even today, when there’s certain like times where I’m feeling super down about myself about like, “Ugh, this is just not, this is just too heavy for me,” I kid you not, I’ll go through there and I’ll start scrolling through and just seeing the, this overflowing like love from people who are not even just in like in California there’s people in, I’ve seen Brazil, I’ve seen people in China, people in England, and just different, all around the world, honestly, from different parts of the world, just saying like how much that this video has impacted them some way, somehow, and it’s just it makes my world just feel a little bit bigger. It makes me feel like my little situation has a greater purpose, greater meaning, and it just, it makes me feel better. If that makes sense? Makes me feel like, just you know.
KARL
Yeah, no, totally. So you talk about being in that really dark, dark place that I think anyone who’s received an HIV diagnosis can relate to. What was it that helped pull you out of that dark place and as I say, step into the sunshine of life?
DORIAN
Yeah, for me personally, it was my mom, if that would make sense. My mother, this is not her first rodeo with HIV, sadly my uncle, or it would be her youngest brother, also contracted HIV in the 80’s. Unfortunately, he passed away from complications with HIV and AIDS, so this was not her first rodeo. So when I got my diagnosis, which I’m sorry to get a little emotional with you right now, but I found this out last week, that my diagnosis was two days off from when my uncle got his diagnosis. So super, super crazy for us to be very almost mirrored with both his story and my story. But it was my mom who got me through it, because when I was in my darkest place and was just like “I don’t want to, I don’t want to deal with things, I wanna just let whatever happens happen,” I felt, I thought, I looked toward her, and I thought “I couldn’t do this to this poor lady. She already went through her youngest brother having this unfortunate disease just take him,” I couldn’t let her go through all that yet again with her son, so that was the one that kind of like pushed me through to like, “Hey, we can do this.” There’s something we can do beyond meds, live life, just because I know she said to herself that she feels like she was robbed of her brother. So I think this was the universe being like “Here, we’re giving you a second chance.” It’s like “Run with it.”
KARL
What was the conversation like having? What’s that conversation like with your mother when you have to tell her that you’re HIV positive, knowing what you knew about the fact that she’d lost her younger brother? I can only imagine there’s gotta be a lot of, I don’t know, guilt or fear on your part going, as to your point, you just said “This poor woman’s been through enough. Uh oh.”
DORIAN
Yeah.
KARL
“Here you go.” Well done, son.
DORIAN
Yeah, the conversation was so positively charged, no pun intended, but it was so loving. Like she, I think from the moment I found out, she like did everything right. “What can I do to help? How can I deal with this? How are you doing?” Like just super like forward with it. Never once was she, she never once showed that she was scared. Did she go do that later on with my father? I’m not quite sure, but everything she showed towards me was 100 percent for me, 100 percent “Whatever I can help you with,” and that’s the part that kind of made me step back a bit. Like how am I being almost, I can say now almost selfish wanting to put my mom through having to see her own son not, or have to go through so many complications and then even maybe like not survive this solely because I didn’t, ’cause I felt this was too much, too heavy, and the fact that out of everyone in my family, she said to me, and this is the part that surprised me the most, it made me feel the most like, “Okay, I need to stop. I need to calm down,” was the fact that my family, friends were like “You are being too irrational. Think about this. There’s medication. You can, we can manage this.” My mom pulled me aside and she said, “If you want this to be the end, just educate yourself a little bit on this, but if you want to let it take its course, I’ll support you on that” and it just like, even now it hurt, it’s crazy to me that my mom loves me so much that she was willing to put herself aside, her pain, her guilt, and all that stuff to be like, “You know what, this is what my child wants, this is what my child needs right now. It’s gonna hurt me. I’ll support you,” and she was the only one who said that “If this is what you want, if you want to like not be on your meds, I’ll support you on it.” Knowing that she obviously went through everything with her brother. And that was the “Aha!” moment that like, “Wow
KARL
So
DORIAN
This woman’s been. Yeah.
KARL
So a year on now, a year on with living with HIV.
DORIAN
Yeah.
KARL
How does life look and how do you look at life now?
DORIAN
So different. I can definitely say it’s one of those weird blessings in disguises. I am more like seizing the moment type things. I don’t want to not like do anything. It was kind of a rough patch at first, especially like figuring out like where I sit in like the LGBT community, ’cause even though it’s very prominent in our committee, unfortunately, there’s a big stigma against it. I’ve had many people not wanna talk to me for a bit. I’ve had people not have romantic interests in me for a bit just because of the un-education about it, of the not knowing like what really is it to be undetectable? I’ve had people literally say like “Oh I don’t know, can I still catch it?” and I have to be like, “No, like I’m, out of everybody you can possibly meet romantically, I’m probably one of the safest people, because I am undetectable. You can’t get it from me.” So there’s just a lot of that, and it took some time, but as I tell many people who come up to me and reach to me and like asked like, “What’s gonna happen?” A lot of people think that they’re not gonna find, they’re never gonna find love again. That’s not true, 100 percent not true. I’ve been with my partner now for over six months. We’re pushing on to seven, literally, what is it? In three days? Three days. Three days. So, and he is the most supportive person ever. I was very upfront with him at the beginning like, “Hey I have HIV. I’m undetectable.” We live our life as nothing that, and I honestly, that’s very cliche, we’ve heard it all the time or whatever, but it honestly does get better, as long as you surround yourself with people who are gonna be there for you, who are gonna support you, who want to know your story, you can honestly take on the world, and if anything, my diagnosis has given me such more of a new lease on life, more of a, “You can do things.” I just keep settling, I’m not settling, I keep just pushing forward, just ’cause there’s so much more to do. There’s so much I can do, and I can’t just let one small facet of my life stop me from reaching any goal I set myself to.
KARL
Well, I love that. I love that positivity and I love that message. Dorian, we’re out of time. I wish we had more, but we’ll put all your information up on our website. Dorian Klemensine. Thank you so much for your time on Plus Talk today.
DORIAN
Thank you for having me. Yeah, thank you for having me guys.
KARL
Dorian, we’ll put all your information up on the website. If people wanna check you out, go to the website pluslifemedia.com and remember you can follow us across social media platforms @PlusLifeMedia. Until next time, be nice to one another. Smile a little more. We’ll see you soon. Bye-bye.