When my sister got sick, you were the one who was there for me. When I got sick, you fled for the hills like there was somebody chasing you.

They were more than just different words: they were different diseases, yet the similarities were undeniable – both were incurable, both were heartbreaking for my parents, both were deadly. I suppose the main difference between them was that I survived, while my sister was not so fortunate. My parents’ spirits were crushed by her lost battle, and to them, I was another tragedy they could not afford, despite paying my way through useless hospital treatments with ease. Despite that I lived on, I was a burden they could no longer bear. I lost all contact with them, and I lost all contact with you, until you, too, realized what my sickness meant.

The virus was dormant in you from birth, and would become dormant in me just days after we laid eyes on each other for the first time. Well, technically, it was the trillionth time, but never had I seen you look at me that way before. It was the way you used to look at my sister.

At Kirsten’s funeral, my own father was scared to hold my hand. I could tell that he wanted to; it wasn’t hard. His hand reached so close it almost brushed mine, sweeping a gust of bitter cold air toward my fingertips. Deliberately, though, and obviously so, he avoided my warmth as if my skin was coated in an invisible poison that would kill him on contact. My diagnosis had come a week earlier.

We were both cursed with the same curse, both afflicted by the same affliction, both weighed down by the same weight. I asked myself for years, then, why was I taboo while you were readily assimilated, accepted, as if there was nothing wrong with you? Yet again, even after years of contemplation, I could never find anything wrong with you. So I asked myself – if there was nothing wrong with you, what could be wrong with me?

Later I would learn that it was that I was selfish and cruel, while you only wanted the best. You drew away from me because of your guilt, and I thanked you by turning the whole town against you.
The one thing the general public and I seemed to agree on anymore was that you were an angel on earth. Back in high school, you had led the fundraisers for the local cancer research institute. In college, you majored in biochemistry so that you could find a cure for your beloved. Me, I just spent a lot of time wishing that I was that beloved and aimlessly trying to find an ambition in life. Now my sole purpose seems to be to remain the scapegoat – a role I deserve, both for Kirsten’s death and for what I did to you.

The doctors had told me I would not make it. I now knew what my sister had felt like in her final days, laying alone in her hospital bed. My parents had abandoned all hope, and subsequently, abandoned her, too. Angry tears welled in my eyes at the thought that it was you who had done this to me. It made me even angrier that I could not bring myself to regret it. It was then that I learned the power of the internet. Posting that slapdash status update saying that you, too, were sick – even daring to put a name to our mutual curse – gave you a taste of my life for the past five years, since Kirsten’s passing and your desperate whim to use me, her sister, as her replacement. As it turned out, not even your parents had known. Rumor has it that at my funeral, your father reached for your hand, but drew away just before the poison could burn him.

So what is the difference between AIDS and cancer? Both will kill you, in their own time, but only one will leave you completely and utterly alone.