I’m empty. I’m empty inside and I don’t know what to do. Why didn’t someone tell me? You see my boyfriend broke up with me the yesterday. Why you say? Well you would never know this by looking at him, and certainly not think it by looking at me, but he says he’s gay. Yeah gay, I can’t believe it. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with people with “alternative lifestyles”, but this wasn’t supposed to happen to me. This is my senior year in college. We were supposed to get married, but you see…..he’s gay. We have been planning our futures around the two of us being together. What am I supposed to do about my plans now…our plans? I mean, you read about it in magazines, and Oprah does specials, but you never think it will be you. My man, the one I was going to spend the rest of my life with is or should I say was, living on the down low! It’s not the fact that I’ve been betrayed or that he took my emotions and threw them away. The problem is not just that he’s gay, but that he has AIDS. For the most part we used protection, but for the last couple of months I let my guards down. Now it’s too late. It’s too late because I am empty. I’m empty because I have AIDS.

Let me back track. My name is Donyelle and I was dating Greg. We were high school sweet hearts. The fairy tale romance is what the two of us shared. Greg was the star quarterback of our high school football team. Sure all the ladies loved him, but I knew he was mine. There were rumors throughout the school about him and Todd, our star running back, at the away games. I just brushed them off; hatas will say anything to bring you down right. Right? Now me, I was captain of the cheerleading squad. You know… the one at the top of the pyramid. Our lives were perfect. No one could top us; we were the “it” couple. I remember when we first thought we were ready for sex. We were in eleventh grade. I thought I was grown and I knew I was in love. He meant the world to me, and I wanted to show him that.