Hypothetically, would you have the courage to tell someone that you have genital herpes? One woman just did it.
Twenty-two-year-old Ella Dawson, who's currently based in New York and a sex-positive activist, shared in Women's Health how she discovered that she has genital herpes. She was close to celebrating her twenty-first birthday when she woke up feeling sore in her vagina. Upon inspection, she saw sores surrounding her labia. She wanted to tell herself that maybe she's just having some allergies due to the material of her new underwear, but deep in her mind and heart, especially after she made a quick look in Google, that it's more than that.
Her fears became a reality when she was eventually diagnosed with genital herpes, an incurable sexually transmitted disease that is spread through having sex with a virus carrier.
Like most people who have been diagnosed with STD, for a while, Dawson felt that her world was caving in. She was worried about whether there would still be men who could look past her disease and how to get away with the stigma that came along with it.
However, she also realized that genital herpes is not uncommon. According to the disease's fact sheet by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, this type of herpes affects men and women between 19 and 49 years and is prevalent in 1 in 6 people. One can also contract the disease even if it is protected sex.
Unlike the others, she decided that she could not live with the fear and embarrassment any longer. It's time to remove the cloak of stigma that covers it and to let people talk about it as openly as any other disease like an allergy.
In her post, she mentioned how it's much easier for her to share about the disease by talking more about it. She noticed how people reacted differently than what she imagined-that is, they would usually get excited and curious to hear about her experience with the disease.
Today, she runs a blog called My Business Is Generally Pleasurable where she shares her daily experiences living as a woman with herpes.
