Importance of STI and unprotected sex awareness

A mother’s instinct is rarely wrong. That’s why Mia Turner awoke from her sleep that awful day. She ran into the living room where she found her daughter lying in a pool of blood. She couldn’t make sense of the situation. Her child’s father, who was living with her boyfriend at the time of the incident, was in shock. She yelled, asking him what happened to her daughter. He denied any involvement, but was later suspected of murdering his own daughter over something so senseless as a broken video game.

As if losing her daughter wasn’t painful enough, Mia received a phone call from an unknown female suggesting Mia should get tested. Mia ignored her thinking she simply wanted her man.

Even though Mia didn’t believe the unknown female, her instinct told her to go and get tested. Two days before her 22nd birthday, Mia received a phone call from the clinic delivering her bad news. “We are sorry to inform you, but you are HIV positive.”

HIV is a virus that later develops into AIDS, which is an abbreviation for the human immunodeficiency virus.

HIV is a virus that is transmitted from person to person through the exchange of body fluids such as blood, semen, breast milk and vaginal secretions. What do you do when someone tells you that you are infected with a disease that cannot be cured? What do you do when someone tells you that you are going to die soon? Who do you become enraged with? All Mia could do was stare outside her window hoping that she was dreaming, hoping that they had somehow made a mistake. Yet there was no mistake: she was HIV positive. The only relief that Mia had was she knew who had infected her, her boyfriend of seven years.

The difference between Mia and many other women is  Mia was infected by the first and only man she had slept with whom she had been dating for seven years. The reason why this is important is because Mia believed that because she was being faithful, her boyfriend was being faithful as well, when in actuality he was sleeping with another woman for four years, the host of the HIV virus.

The most important thing about Mia’s story is that she trusted a man that shouldn’t have been trusted. What do you do when you are sleeping with someone you love, someone you trust or even someone you are just sleeping with casually? You always wear a condom. No one you are involved with can be fully trusted. As a sexually involved woman or man, always have your guard up.

No woman or man can say that they are 100% sure the person they are involved with is sleeping exclusively with them. Think about how many people are being infected with STD’s. Most of the time it’s because someone is stepping outside of their relationship and not wearing a condom. Anyone that chooses to not wear a condom is not only involving themselves in unsafe sex, they are also taking a risk with their life.

I doubt that anyone who has caught any sexually transmitted disease thought the sex was worth it. No one wants to think about sexually transmitted diseases unless it happens to them, or to someone they love. If you are willing to take the risk of having unprotected sex then when and if you are receiving that devastating news of having gonorrhea, Chlamydia, herpes, syphilis, HIV, or Aids don’t blame anyone but yourself. Know that there are many people who know they are infected yet they will still have sex with others in an attempt to infect others just because they cannot accept their own misery. If you are already aware of the consequences yet you are still engaging in unsafe sex, than that says a lot about you as a person.

Khadijah Hassan is a junior majoring in English and print journalism.