Throughout Remi's blog and his personal testimony, you will also find the words of his friends, family, and strangers to whom he has offered the floor. For Remi it has always been clear that all experiences on the subject of HIV and AIDS are unique. We have selected some inspiring, or sometimes more difficult, but nonetheless important, passages from these testimonies. Feel free to browse the blog if you want to read them in full. Happy reading and thank you to these people for offering their words.
"No my brother wasn’t going to die. No, he wouldn't be a pale version of Tom Hanks. Yes, he would be happy and have a life filled with love..."
"Fear of the unknown, rejection, ignorance and indifference will always have victims. How can we still accept in 2018 that HIV-positive people feel alone and need to apologise for existing,. They conceal themselves and want to disappear so as not to pretend any more... The only ones who should be ashamed are those who reject, abandon and neglect."
’’One thing bothers me, I'm tired of having to tell it all again and again to illustrious strangers, by laying out my medical file in front of a them. I exist only through my identity as a patient. When you have a medical history like mine, it's sometimes difficult to feel considered as anythingother than an accumulator of "bad luck". And the more I tell it, the more I feel it creeping up on me, as if that's all I am now."
"Being alone is hard. Hard, but not insurmountable. There are a lot of paths to try and get support. But none of them are provided readily. It's up to the patient, the sufferer, to go and find his or her solution."
’’I felt fear and rejection, but rationally, it was more beneficial to get information, listen to the truths and trust the informer. Thank you to the doctor I met that day, she knew how to stop me from being afraid."
"And then I fell off my chair. Because for me, being HIV positive meant being super sick, and I don't remember Remi "looking sick". I made the distinction between HIV and AIDS, but I thought that one undoubtedly led to the other, and therefore that once the "process" started, it had to be physically visible. So I was one of those people, unfortunately like the vast majority of people on this earth."