Living with HIV hasn’t been easy for Juliet, 14
Juliet 14, found out she had HIV when she was 9.
” Juliet is an enthusiastic 14-year-old kid. Even though she’s underweight (only 60 pounds) and short for her age, she has life and energy… and HIV.
“I’m afraid because I don’t know what’s after life,” Juliet told me. “I’m not ready yet; I don’t want to die at a young age. I want to live ’til there’s a cure. I want to go to college and be a marine biologist. I want to try to get out and educate. I want to travel. I want to get married and I want to have a girl. But I don’t want to have a kid and then die down the line.”
Juliet was one of the first 20 babies in Los Angeles to be born with and get treated for HIV. Juliet got the virus from her mom, who got it from her dad, who has since died.
Juliet found out she had HIV when she was nine
Juliet found out when she was nine. “I started asking questions because I was going to the doctor every month and getting poked with needles,” Juliet said. When her mom told her, she didn’t know how to react.
Juliet has been on medication since she was five. Juliet gets sick quite easily (she’s had chicken pox three times and when she was seven she was forced to go through a spinal tap after having a seizure).
“All the stuff I go through [other kids] don’t have to do at my age,” Juliet said. “I wish I could just let that all loose… like my friend across the street. She doesn’t have to go to the hospital, and take medicine and worry. And the mental part—that’s tough for any kid.”
“Some kids are angry at the world,” she added. “I know some kids that are just down on it. They do crazy things, like they’re afraid they’re gonna die soon. But the kids take it a little bit better than the adults.”
“There are some cool aspects about being HIV positive—I’d trade it all to be normal, I’d trade it all in a heartbeat. But when you’re healthy you get to do a lot of cool stuff,” she said. Juliet’s cool stuff—she met Dustin Hoffman and Drew Barrymore, and went to Nickelodeon Studios at age 7, thanks to the Make A Wish Foundation.
“The worst part of being HIV positive is losing your friends,” Juliet said. “I lost about four friends and my dad.
“[My] friend Ariel passed away this past January. I have known her since I was 3. She was 15. From a healthy, rambunctious teenager, she went down. She was in a wheelchair and on IVs. She was in and out of the hospital for like six months. And they ran a line into a main artery and then she lost her eyesight. She went through so much pain; it was just not fair. She got [HIV] from a transfusion, which was really not fair. She fought to live right to the end. She was really brave and strong. She put up with so much. I really looked up to her.”
Most people don’t know she is HIV positive
I never saw Juliet. I don’t know her phone number or her real name. She called me so she could remain anonymous. In fact, half of the people in her life don’t know she has HIV. She could be anyone.
The one constant between Juliet’s two worlds is her mom.
“She’s, like, kept me alive,” she said. “We can’t lose each other; if my mom got sick and passed away, I would literally die.”
Juliet and her mom think carefully about who to tell and who not to tell. It was a big decision for Juliet when she told her best friend about her illness.
The first time that Juliet disclosed her condition was to the nurse in junior high. The nurse wanted to take Juliet out of her gifted magnet program and put her into adaptive PE.
“That was my first time disclosing. I started freaking out,” Juliet said. “[The nurse] wanted to tell all the teachers. I was like, ‘No! Everyone’s gonna know!'”
Juliet and her mother went to the AIDS Service Center, got some attorneys and stormed into the vice-principal’s office. School officials agreed not to reveal her secret. A regular kid wouldn’t have to worry about that, but life is different for someone who has HIV.
“In a way [having HIV] makes me value life more: Life’s short already, but no one wants to die young,” Juliet said.”