On Tuesday, May 28, Seattle Weekly published “HIV’s New Normal,” an article about Christina Rock, a woman living in Seattle and living with HIV.

Here’s an excerpt of Seattle Weekly‘s article:

Christina Rock was 2½ years old when she first heard the word AIDS. She was playing in the sandbox at her Key West, Fla., apartment complex. A little boy was in there with her, surrounded by his toy trucks. Other kids played nearby.

Suddenly a stream of parents appeared, snatching their children away. An older boy hovering nearby, maybe 7 or 8 years old, filled Christina in. “We can’t play with you anymore because you have AIDS,” he said.

She was far too young to know what that meant. Nor had she any idea that her mother, a gaunt heroin user, had just tested positive for the disease, and that word had quickly leaked out at the complex, allowing the obvious implication to be drawn about Christina’s own status.

It was 1986—the dawn of the AIDS era—and the disease seemed both mysterious and unstoppable, spreading at a frightening rate from lover to lover, user to user, mother to child.

Her mother, teary when she picked up Christina up from the playground, didn’t explain. So all the 2½-year-old knew was that she wasn’t supposed to play on the playground anymore. She spent a lot of time indoors.

Over the next few years, her mother would die—although it seemed to Christina more as if the skeletal figure had just disappeared—and she started taking a pill, AZT, that sometimes left a bile-like residue in her mouth when she failed to swallow it.

But not until she was 5 did the word AIDS re-enter her life, again spoken by neighborhood children. Twin girls one day told her she had the disease. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Christina replied. The twins suggested that she go home and ask her father why she was taking medicine. So she did.

Her dad was furious. “We never say that word,” he told Christina. “We don’t talk about it. You have a medical condition.”  That became the term he always used: Christina’s “condition.”

Whatever it was, it was serious. She understood that much. Around the same time, he told her that she was not expected to live past age 10.

…Today, Christina, a full-bodied woman with long brown hair, a sunny disposition, and a geeky side that finds an outlet in video games, lives with a long-term boyfriend who is HIV-negative. They have two young children, both of whom are free of the virus.

Click here to read the rest of Christina’s story.