Yeah, I know I’m so late to write about this. I was hospitalized since 25 December 2008 for a pneumonia opportunistic infection due to my HIV, - and before I knew it, the year had suddenly ended. I’m already home by now on an outpatient treatment, but haven’t been well enough to write anything in my blog until today. Or at least, that’s what I feel.

——————————-

So here we go. 2008. How would I call it ? How would you call a year when you were diagnosed with a terminal disease ? A year when they detected that a deadly virus is living inside your body ? That’s how 2008 opened for me when back in January I found out about it. I am not gonna bore you with details of what it is. The disease is already as notorious as it can be and you can find some information easily about it scattered all over the net.

Yet the tears did come. Granted, they were intermittent. I did not feel really bad about it at the beginning because I didn’t feel anything bad physically. But as the time goes by and my health deteriorated, it was exactly in the other end of the year that I got honestly scared and broke down to a grown man’s cry.

In some other things, 2008 also came with a package of difficult challenges for me. One that came readily into mind was the issue about housing. I was hard-pressed to deal with a profound question : As the head of the family, would I be able to provide mine with a decent place to live ? Especially because we’ve moved two times during the year.

———————————–

Those were some of the ugly parts. Curiously, the good things about the year were closely related to the challenges. First of all, I got helped by a long-lost friend currently residing in the US to deal with my rent, - which I was unable to tackle by myself. This fact has given me some goose bumps because I haven’t even been talking to him for about 15 years or so, when suddenly we bumped into each other over the Internet.

The second uncannily sweet thing about the year owed its existence to the time when my wife and I agreed ( and insisted ) to install a 24-hour Internet connection in our place when circumstances told us to do otherwise. It is easily imaginable that before it happened, I was unaware about the latest things and trends that were happening on the net. Oh, I knew that practically there is no limit to what you can do with it, but I hardly know what kind of an animal Social Networking is, - for example.

Until I joined some of them. Little by little, I gained some good friends who were very supportive during the hard times. In fact, remember when an American student was arrested in Egypt and got released after he tweeted the news ? Something in a close resemblance happened to me when later on I found out that those online friends were helping me not only psychologically, - but in a very real and practical way. I am not going to tell you how they exactly did that, but suffice it to say that they helped me go on through my lack of resources in some of my bleakest times.

—————————-

With that, I am going to wrap up and close this post. What happened to me in the past year had clearly illustrated that you can feel like you have all the bad luck you could possibly get; but if you don’t lose your faith, you will find out that you will also have all the help you need to pull yourself through. It is an undeniable proof that Divine Providence exists. God never sleeps. Just like some of my online friends who are also seemingly don’t need one.

So to all of you who were there when we badly need it, this post goes out to you. You know who you are….

Tweet This