The Lies I Told Myself

Check out my friend Rodney’s amazing new More Life vlog, starting with this entry about his HIV misdiagnosis as a teenage boy in Texas. Rodney is a longtime community organizer, activist, and most recently, minister-in-training. He blends the political with the spiritual in really rare and important ways for a whole new generation.

Transcript after the jump by Maggie Froelich. Thank you Maggie!

Hi. My name is Rodney McKenzie and I am here. I live in New York City, in Brooklyn, and I am here to talk about the lies I told myself, the lies I believed. When I was 16 years old I decided to give blood, because that, I was told, in Lancaster, Texas, was the civic duty of all people, and I gave blood, and two weeks later a letter came into the mail, saying that I had tested positive for this rare strand of HIV, it was called HIV 2, and I freaked out. I shut down. And I freaked out and I shut down for a variety of reasons, but one of the reasons I shut down, was because where I grew up, in Dallas, Texas, I went to churches that told me that because I was gay I was going to hell. And this letter, this letter that I saw–for me–at 16, was an indication that what they said was true, I was going to hell. And that HIV had came into my life to usher in my death. I got retested. I never got the test results, because I couldn’t deal with that truth. So I decided, at 16, that I would move. I decided that as soon as I could I would go to New York City, and that I would die before I was 30. I would die alone, away from my family, so they wouldn’t have to deal with my death. You know, 10 years later I got retested, because there was a moment, at 26, where I realized, I can’t live like this anymore. That I have to at least know, and get the best health, get the best doctors, get the best people in my life to help me prolong my life as long as possible, as far as possible, and I remember being in the doctor’s office, and the doctor giving me my test results, and he said, “you’re negative, you’re not positive,” and I got retested again and he said, “you’re negative, you’re not positive. You’re not HIV positive.” you know, for 10 years of my life I believed I was HIV positive. For ten years of my life I believed that God hated me, and that I was going to go to hell, and that I was going to burn in eternity. For ten years of my life I made decisions and choices which I will go into years and years on this video blog. But I made decisions and choices and was in relationships because I believed that I wasn’t worthy of being loved, because God, I believed at the time, because of what I was told as a child, because of what I chose to believe as a young man, I believed that God didn’t love me. I believed that I wasn’t worthy of love, and that who I was was wrong. But that day, when I decided to take the hero’s journey, and see myself, and to deal with the results, whatever they were, and to realized that I was loved and not wrong, changed my life. And my life wasn’t changed because my results were negative. But my life was changed because I realized in a moment that I could be loved, that I was loved, that god did not hate me. And because of that, my whole life, my whole existence, my whole experience since then has been brand new. We have told ourselves lies that are not true. We have believed someone else’s thoughts and ideas about god that are not true. We are loved. God is love. God is right where we are as beings within us. And this blog is about exploring that truth. This blog is about accepting that we are loved and going within ourselves and revealing the splendor or who or what we are. So welcome to more life channel, where we’re going to explore who we are and what we are, and I am going to tell the stories of my life, tell the lessons I have learned, and figure out how to use spiritual principles and spiritual laws practically so that our lives can be lived fully. Thank you. Look forward to seeing you. Holla.