5 or 6 years back, when I was in form 4 or form 5 when I was practicing karate, I notice a reddish bump on the side of my abdomen. It was like a mosquito bite but just a bit awkward. It got tiny swelling fluid like on the reddish swelling bump. Like those mutated mosquitoes bites with lots of fluid like pimples on top.
The thing is it was not painful as it should have been. So I began my trip to various clinic to help me solve this problem. At first when I was told it was a herpes simplex virus, I thought “okay... can you get rid of it for me?”... then after the 3rd or 4th clinic I went, I start to realize all I want is a cure and I look for it in the internet and in books. All lead me to one thing, I can't remove this virus in my body.
And yes I did find a cure, acyclovir family. I took the oral and the external cream for the skin. It took 2 to 3 weeks and I began to heal.. the blister dissapear and everything seems to return to normal.
And yet, I did not completely heal personally. I was sad and depressed because knowing that I can't possibly kissed without the possibility of transmitting this virus to my partner.
Somehow along the way, I have been delaying my suicide plan and along the way, I was shown something I was not taught in school. Not taught in morale education. It was about having faith. About believing the things you cannot see, you cannot touch and you cannot experience by physical mean, at least not directly.
The suicide of an Indian student during my form 6 hits me deeply. I see that death is so simple compare to life but with death it was the full stop of life. And I realize, I still got a lot of thing I want to do in life. Like riding a horse in the plains in New Zealand and growing food and standing in a production area in a vast land filled with life.
I realize I don't want to die. I got to live it out even if it means I will face troubled relationship and misunderstanding in life but as long as I live, I can make a difference in my life now.
And the disease is also maybe what I called as fate and I realize if I have not had this herpes in me that time, I would probably will not enter the st john's cathedral. I would probably did not learn to pray.
Though I once thought this as a curse, it was soon seems to me it was like a blessing for I was shown a world I once forsake as a child. As a child raise in a Chinese family growing up with traditional ancestral praying and the many Gods, I found I was soon becoming an atheist and reject the idea of religion.
But it is this disease, that I learn to pray, to have faith and to love myself and people around me better. I think it also taught me that by encountering problems in our life and working hard to overcome it, we are then becoming a more mature person. And it hold true in my life at least.
Fast forward today. I was doing aquaculture and every morning when I wake up for work during my industrial training, I felt really really good because I was standing in a production area surrounded by life (white shrimp).
I will never know what the future hold for me but I have faith on myself and the plan God have for me.
