“The federal response to AIDS is considered uncoordinated, insufficient and inadequate.” -PubMed. 

Long long ago during a stormy presidency, when we used to hide in the shadows. The straights ruled the day… We ruled the night. But little did we know we were about to be massacred. I still have nightmares years later, my dreams plagued by thoughts of ways we could have been seen without all of us dieing. How the very government that we trusted with our lives contributed to our downfall. 

It was sickening the amount of dead bodies that started to line the street. We were scared and alone, being hunted by something there was no stopping, something that could not be seen until it took over your own body. We plead to the government for help but they just cut the funding to the few programs willing to help, the few people who weren’t disgusted with us for being who we are, leaving us defenseless. So many of us were slaughtered and the people we were told to trust turned their backs on us. We were truly and utterly alone. Or that's what we thought, because in the shadows it lurked. Right around the corner, every step we took was calculated in fear knowing that it could get us at any moment and we’d be helpless to stop it. The monster grew and grew basking in the shadows that the government had casted. More and more of us dropped like flies and it wasn’t until this started affecting their own people did the government finally see us. They saw us desperately flailing about as our brother, sisters, mothers, fathers, were dying all around us and they finally casted some light into our hopeless situation. Finally they stood up, acknowledged us as human beings, but it was too late… the beast had won. Homophobia and AIDS had managed to kill off more than half our population leaving our children with no elders to guide them. And the government had let it. 

You would think this would be a happily ever after where we slay the beast and come out of the shadows but they’re still there. They had won, we were all dead. There weren't enough of us to keep fighting, they painted over our trauma and wounds saying that they did their best, saying that they helped. They did not. They only helped when it started to affect people like them, why is it that people refuse to take action until it affects their lives? But for now the shadows were dimmed, the beast was slain as they put it, slowly we came out in the daytime still afraid of being hunted, but knowing we had survived the worst and that so many had not. While we dealt with the grief of losing all our friends, our children got to live in a world, and in comparison to ours, knowing no fear of being hunted by this ravenous beast. They were able to discover who they were and when those of us who survived the brutal massacre told our story they questioned our great government. They questioned themselves and the people who raised them. They learned to question what is right and wrong and we taught them to stand up for themselves and never be pushed into the shadows again. They let their light shine and refused to be dimmed, casting the shadows away. But even though the worst was over in the shadows it still lurks. All over the world countries just like ours turn a blind eye and the shadows grow bigger, the beast returning, trying to come back to its former glory. But we have raised you well, never be silenced and never step into the shadows. For it is there that it lurks.