SM: How did you feel toward the boyfriend that infected you?
Marvelyn: I always look back to that night and … he had let me know he didn’t have a condom. And he made sure it was my choice. So I was like, ‘well if you would have used a condom you wouldn’t have been in this situation. You had a choice.’ So I was never mad at him for infecting me. I was mad at him for not wanting to talk to me afterwards.

SM: Do you know how he got it?
Marvelyn: No. Once I told him I was HIV positive, he basically kept his distance.

SM: Did he know he had HIV at the time he infected you?
Marvelyn: I do believe he knew.

SM: It’s hard to believe you weren’t angry at him for infecting you. Marvelyn: I look at it as ‘what if he had it and didn’t know about it’—I still have HIV. And being so open about my HIV status, I also know why people don’t tell you.

SM: What was it like when you went back to college?
Marvelyn: A lot had changed. When I was released from the hospital, I had to take [medication] at nine o’clock in the morning and nine o’clock at night. Nine o’clock in the morning meant school time for me. People would ask me, ‘do you have it?’ and I would deny it. But when I was taking the medicine, people figured it out. I became the laughing stock of the school to the point [where] I would walk to my classes by myself. There was one time when I was eating in the cafeteria and they threw my tray away after I set it on top of the trash can. It actually got so bad that I dropped out of college and never returned.

SM: How did you feel when people shunned you?

“HIV is not an adjective.”