Paige Rawl takes a 'Positive' approach to HIV education, stopping bullying
After one of the lowest points of her life, Paige Rawl made a friend, a fellow teenager named Louis, in the locked-door facility where they were both hospitalized. While waiting in the cafeteria line, the incredulous Louis said to her, "So let me get this straight....I'm gay, and kids say that I have AIDS, even though I don't. And you're the straightest, skinniest little white girl I've ever met, and you're a beauty queen, and you actually do have AIDS."
"Not AIDS," Rawl told her friend. "HIV."
Louis was neither the first nor the last person to blink at the knowledge that Rawl lives with HIV. She fits none of the common assumptions about people with HIV. Yet that's partly what makes Rawl, now 20, an effective AIDS educator and anti-bullying activist.
Rawl is visiting bookstores promoting her memoir, "Positive" (HarperCollins), co-written with Ali Benjamin, and talking to school groups. She'll speak at 7 p.m. Thursday at Boswell Book Company, 2559 N. Downer Ave. The event is co-sponsored by the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin.
Rawl, an Indianapolis native, was born with HIV, contracting it from her mother, who had unknowingly received it from her father. Her mother made strenuous efforts from the beginning to keep Paige healthy. In fifth grade, Rawl, who had always cooperated with Mom's strict medical and health routines, put enough facts together to ask her Mom if she was HIV-positive.
During a recreational lock-in, Rawl shared her HIV status with a friend, who blabbed it everywhere, leading to several years of bullying that included brutal notes and the hateful nickname PAIDS. School officials were worse than no help, variously ignoring, discounting or even blaming Rawl for the problems. A soccer coach even suggested that Rawl's HIV status be used to the team's advantage — girls on opposing teams would be afraid to make contact with her.
Eventually, Rawl found a high school that treated her like a human being, but she had internalized so much pain from past abuse that she swallowed 15 of her mother's sleeping pills. After that incident, and with help, she began to embrace a more positive outlook. Her first visit to Camp Kindle, a program for kids with HIV, was a turning point in her life. (If the bullying scenes in "Positive" don't bring tears to your eyes, her words about the love and acceptance shown at Camp Kindle will.)
As a teen, she became a certified HIV/AIDS educator through the American Red Cross; her testimony helped pass anti-bullying legislation in Indiana in 2013.
While Rawl believes a sixth-grader with HIV today would find more understanding in school about her status, she knows there are always people ready to apply a stigma.
"Being older now, people who don't accept me are the people who don't matter," she said in a telephone interview.
One surprisingly source of strength for Rawl in those years was her participation in pageants, which she began at age 8 and continued through high school. "For me, pageants have always been a combination of four of the things I love most in the world: dressing up, singing onstage, speaking in front of people, and meeting new friends. They've helped me to think on the spot and respond to all kinds of situations with warmth," she writes in "Positive."
"My last couple ones I used anti-bullying and HIV as my platform, to educate people in the pageant world about HIV and AIDS," Rawl said during the phone interview.
Education and prevention are the most important things schools can do about bullying, Rawl said. Unfortunately, children, some as young as elementary school, are killing themselves because of bullying, she said.
Rawl said she takes one pill a day for HIV and the virus is undetectable in her. She'd also be the first to tell you that doesn't mean she's cured. (Rawl's a good explainer: Her book includes a clear, easy to follow explanation of the difference between HIV and AIDS. )
After taking some time for speaking engagements related to "Positive," Rawl will return to school at Ball State University, where she plans to major in molecular biology. "I want to go into HIV medicine research," she said. "I have such a love for the science. I want to work in a lab and find more medications."
IF YOU GO
Who: Paige Rawl
When: 7 p.m. Sept. 25
Where:Boswell Book Company, 2559 N. Downer Ave.
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