SPFPP 280: Living - 10 Years with Herpes

Happy 10 year herpes anniversary to me from South Africa ya'll. Here I share more of my origin story as well as where I stand these days with my diagnosis. I fumble through the Venom/Eddie Brock and Tony Stark/Iron Man analogy I attempted to speak through and tease on Instagram. I share my backstory, useful resources I've found most helpful, and the importance of just living despite herpes.

Episode 280 Transcript

The 10-Year Herp-Versary and Diagnosis Story

00:00:00 Courtney Brame: Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brame. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that serves as a support resource for people with herpes. Um, the most useful resource to date has been the podcast. Uh, as explained to me by different people who have talked to me and shared their thoughts about, uh, the available and accessible resources that are out there. Um, and some of the reviews that have come in have all really reflected back that the podcast has just been a phenomenal resource. So, uh, if this is your first episode that you're listening to, I encourage you to just go back, look through titles and descriptions and see what calls to you. Uh, because just hearing people speak about this unspoken about thing can be a really healing process for you. Uh, today is my 10 year herpes anniversary. It was on this day 10 years ago that I woke up at my grandmother's house with a fever. Uh I had chills, body aches, and I remember getting out of the bed.

00:01:41 Courtney Brame: It was a Saturday morning. Uh stumbling to the bathroom and I went and peed and when I peed, like I grabbed my penis with my right hand. And so when I touched it, I didn't feel it on my penis until uh after I felt it on my hand. And I was like, "What the f?" And when I looked at it, it just looked like there was about a nickel sized head of cauliflower. Like what that looks like is what I saw at the time. So that was my cluster of bumps. And I remember I yelled. I was like, "What the?" I actually said the f- word. I was living with my grandmother at the time. and she knocked on the door. My grandmother's a nurse, so she's like, "Corey, are you okay?" I didn't even let her open the door. I was like, "No, I didn't go to the doctor right now." My mom drove me to the doctor and the doctor looked at

00:02:31 Courtney Brame: it. He said, "Yep, looks like herpes." Um, I did a swab. I got treatment for chlamydia and gonorrhea just in case I were exposed to those things. And uh, I got a pamphlet that showed some very confusing statistics between one and six, one in five, one in four, one and three, one and two. And the language was um showing the population of people who had oral HSV1, oral HSV2, genital HSV1, genital HSV2, and then just herpes. So the way that it was laid out uh was it didn't make sense to me at the time, but also I wasn't trying to hear that because that doesn't tell me uh who around me has herpes. It just tells me how many people have it. So, not knowing anybody who has herpes and then hearing that all these people have herpes doesn't really do anything for people. Uh, and this was what my first experience was. And so, um, leaving the doctor, went and got the medication for it.

00:03:31 Courtney Brame: Um, my mom was, she was just there. I remember her being there. I don't really remember much about our interactions from the day. Um, and uh, I got the medicine and it was uh, Valtrax, Valcycllovere. I was supposed to take two pills twice a day, 6 hours apart, and then the outbreak was gone. And that's actually what happened. That was how it worked. Uh after I got home, uh I don't think I checked in with anybody right away cuz I went back and I looked through my Facebook messages and this is how I found out uh about when I was diagnosed was because uh I sent a text specifically that was like, "Hey, I don't have your number anymore. Can you call me?" And that was it. It was just, "Can you call me?" Um and I remember I remember who I sent that to. And uh I remember checking in with uh my most recent partners and I just asked, "Hey, do you have herpes?" Everybody said no.

00:04:29 Courtney Brame: Fortunately for me, I wasn't able to point blame at anybody. I didn't point the finger at anyone. Um, I didn't really know anything about it. I just knew that this was something that nobody wanted. It was something I was made fun of. And honestly, I thought that my genitals were going to always look the way that they did when I had that first outbreak. And uh to my surprise, after 3 days of medication, it went away. It looked completely normal as if nothing had ever happened. And I was just so relieved. People often ask me whenever I get diagnosed, you know, what did I feel? And what I felt was a sense of relief because I didn't want to be known as a dude that was giving people herpes. So I had a struggle with a slight sense of embarrassment initially. Uh I was embarrassed to be known as someone who was going around giving people an STD.

00:05:25 Courtney Brame: And that's really where my head was until I heard from uh my most recent partners and none of them had herpes. So at that point I was relieved. And I think that many of the people that I've spoken to when they get diagnosed uh they may take it uh in sort of the opposite way. Like for me, I really took it on as a responsibility. It's like, oh, I'm responsible in this way. I hope I'm not responsible for having passed this on to anyone else. Whereas other people may interpret it from a victim perspective of how could someone do this to me? And it would have been really easy for me to do if I knew who I got it from. So, somebody obviously had it and had passed it on to me, but maybe they didn't know. And it took for me to really start talking to a lot of people who have herpes before I could understand that that was even a possibility.

Early Research and Taking Control of Health

00:06:21 Courtney Brame: Uh it wasn't the Googling, it wasn't the research that pamphlet that I got from the doctor. None of these things were really helpful to me. I will say that when I did Google because uh my background is actually in advertising and public relations. So one of the things that I learned really quickly was that you want to be specific in your Google search. So rather than me googling herpes, I Googled, you know, how to reduce herpes outbreaks, how to minimize passing it on. And there were three main things that came up. It was uh managing your nutrition, uh making sure to exercise, and then of course managing your stress. So when I found that information, I began to practice yoga. Uh I began to see a nutritionist and a personal trainer. And that really got me to understand what I was eating, how I was eating because before that, I was really eating whatever I wanted to. I played football all through high school, well, all through middle school, all through high school, and then all the way through college.

00:07:22 Courtney Brame: And I kept those eating habits even after uh I had stopped working out. I stopped uh having practice, having games cuz you really you do a lot. You burn a lot of carbs, calories when you are physically active as an athlete. So, I don't know, but I played with this idea that perhaps I had maybe gotten herpes a lot sooner and because I was so active and my uh immune system was at its peak while I was playing sports that maybe I just didn't have an outbreak at the time. I don't know. I'll never know. And I do remember there was a point in time where uh it was like my junior year in college. I got tested for herpes and I tested negative, but the test results always bothered me because I tested under the amount of um antibodies that you would need in order to test positive. So, that tells me that there was at the very least a presence of antibodies regardless if they weren't enough yet to test positive.

00:08:33 Courtney Brame: So, I don't know if it was repeat exposure that made me test positive or if it was just the time that had passed that made me test positive. And I've not been able to get an answer about that. And I'm okay with it because at this point in my life, uh while herpes is a very significant part of my life, it's not at the same time. And I want to hopefully get through that and explain that in this podcast episode. Uh because I'll say that those first four years of my diagnosis, so I would have been diagnosed March or I would have gotten my first symptoms diagnosis March 23rd, 2013. And in the beginning, I was not okay. Uh I was more okay than a lot of people that I talked to, but I wasn't okay. And the way that that showed up for me was um I remember uh one of my partners at the time, she was just like, "Well, if you got it, we got it." So I still had access to a relationship and I hadn't experienced any sort of

Rejection and Better Communication

00:09:41 Courtney Brame: rejection at that point. And then the very next person that I told uh we went on to continue a relationship and uh she had actually told me that she knew someone who had herpes and had a conversation with this person and uh felt comfortable with moving forward. Now, that relationship did end because of herpes. Um I remember, man, this was like this was a pretty effed up experience for me because um I remember we were having sex uh and I was on top of her. We were living together and um she had recently gotten tested and her test results were negative. I knew this because we talked about it. So, I was on top of her like I'm stroking missionary and she kind of starts crying and she taps me and she says, "I can't do this." I pull out, I go to the bathroom and I just throw the condom away and I'm washing my hands. I looked in the mirror and I was like, "Yep, this is- this is my life now." And I don't know that I ever I mentioned this perhaps,

00:10:42 Courtney Brame: but I haven't really talked about this in detail, but that really hurt. And I didn't know how much that hurt because I had other things going on. I was working. I was in a new city. Um, I was having to deal with that relationship. I was still juggling things with an ex-girlfriend. Uh, this particular partner had initially or around the time that we actually ended the relationship proposed nonmonogamy, but I didn't… I had no grasp of that at all. And it took me until years after to realize what was actually being said to me at the time, which uh I think has really contributed to my response to poor communication because I very much now ask like, okay, what does that actually mean? What does this mean to you? Here's what I hear you say. This may not be what you're saying. So, uh, I'm consistently, uh, becoming a better communicator at that at that point in time.

00:11:47 Courtney Brame: I was consistently becoming a better communicator because there was a lot of stuff that I didn't really understand that was happening uh, in terms of how I and said partner were communicating. So, the relationship ends. Um, I remember I got back with an ex. That relationship didn't work out for a number of reasons, but it wasn't at all related to herpes. So, during this time period, I really didn't have to deal with my diagnosis up until 2017. 2017 uh was when I made a decision. I was like, "Yeah, I'm moving back to uh St. Louis from uh I was living in Houston, Texas at the time." And uh I decided cuz I was on Tinder. I was on Bumble and honestly I've never really had success on normal dating sites. Normal dating sites being Tinder, Bumble, uh Hinge, uh Plenty of Fish. However, I did meet one of my very best friends off of Plenty of Fish. Um it's actually the person who built the website.

Positive Singles and Experiencing Present Sex

00:12:51 Courtney Brame: So, uh shout out to Jenny. And she and I from like 20 whatever 15 16 have become almost like best friends. I would say like one of my closest friends. Uh and we also have like this really just genuine beautiful working relationship with one another. So um aside from that, yeah, I didn't really… I didn't really get a lot of good potential matches off of dating sites or encounters, engagements, whatever. And I remember just going on and I was like, there has to be a website for people with herpes. And of course, I found it. You know which one I'm talking about. But, uh, it's called Positive Singles for those who may not know. And while I was on Positive Singles, um, I ended up meeting someone who actually changed my sex life. And I can- I don't know where this woman is to this day. I don't know how she's doing. I remember she was divorced like hey if you hear this like hit me up I just want to hear about how you’re doing.

00:14:01 Courtney Brame: Uh you know who you are. I ain't going to say your name but uh we were having sex. We made some videos. I deleted it because I don't have a phone anymore. Um, so damn. Yeah. I didn't know her last name. I just knew her first name. And we were having a really great time. I know she worked at Whole Foods. Yeah. that that was it. And uh this was like my first uh like real experience with being able to just genuinely be present. This was the first like present sex that I had, I would say. And so, um we were having sex one time and I remember her saying to me, she was like, uh after, it was after I had uh had an orgasm, she was like, I feel like you wanted to come a lot more. You can come as much as you want. And that was, she may not know this, but that was the most liberating thing anyone had said to me because I had been accustomed to making an effort to last for long periods of time.

00:15:02 Courtney Brame: Like the longer sex lasted, the better it was sort of what my philosophy was. I mean, if you think about how I came up, Missy Elliott, one minute man, like they made fun of men who came fast. like if you had if you had an orgasm in like less than 10 minutes then you got made fun of. There was a rap song about you, right? And so I was like, man, you know, I'll be damned if somebody makes a song about me not lasting long. And that was something that was in my control. It was just a matter of masturbating a lot and sort of uh desensitizing and not being present. But what she did for me was give me permission to be present. And it was through that presence that I was able to have multiple orgasms during a session of sex. And we were able to get back to it and like without too long of a recovery time.

00:15:57 Courtney Brame: And this was an older woman. She wasn't that much older than me. I think she was like 30 when I was 26, 27. I don't remember. But uh I think that woman changed my life. And then of course my ass I was not having a lot of success at my job. So uh I ended up quitting my job uh after that's a whole side story but I ended up leaving my job in Houston uh working in advertising. So I moved back home and it was when I got back home in 2017 uh it was early 2017 I moved back just in time for Mardi Gras because I wanted to participate in Mardi Gras. Um, I got back and, you know, I think that that was when I noticed the maturity in me because it was uh being around so many people who, you know, it was just like we're here to drink and that's it. I was just kind of like, uh, this I don't think this is for me anymore.

00:16:57 Courtney Brame: And that's when I started drinking a lot less. And I think that that was probably when I more so began to connect with uh my spirituality or my subconscious, whatever it is that we want to call it. I started to have much more of a deeper connection with myself. And uh I stayed on the dating site and what I noticed about myself was I was meeting people, I was having conversations and herpes had never come up. Now, there's a lot of stories that I have, you know, pre finding positive singles, uh, with just how hard it was for me to date. Even in real life, like I have always done much better in person. I just never believed that. Uh, there I remember one of my friends, man, my buddy Mark, we were hanging with these models. I don't know how, but he is always someone that I look up to for his social skills, his ability to just be genuine, talk to people, have a conversation, keep a conversation going, talk to anybody.

00:18:00 Courtney Brame: And somehow like we were out with these models and I remember one of them, she was just like, she was so gorgeous to me. Like she wasn't the baddest one, but to me she was the baddest one. Like objectively she wasn't, but subjectively I was like, "Oh my god, it's the one." And I remember I ain't had no game. I ain't had no game. But like when someone's attracted to you, you don't really need game is what they say. But I remember in this instance, uh we were out and I knew she was liking me. Like I felt it, she felt it. But I just didn't do this right. I didn't do it right because uh I still to this day remember asking her for her number. I was like, "Hey, I don't even know what to say, but can I get your number?" And she like leaned in. She smiled. She gave me her number.

00:18:51 Courtney Brame: And then she gave me my phone back and she goes, "Call me when you think of a better line." I said, "Oh." She ain't never answered a phone, by the way. But it's all right. It's all good because I learned from that. And we need these, we need these failures. We need these rejections. And what's funny is I had herpes at the time, but we never even made it to the point for me to disclose that I had herpes to her. And I was in my head about that. I was like, "Oh, you know, she's not going to like me. I'm going to have to tell her I have herpes." And the energy that went into, "Oh my god, I have herpes. She's not going to like me." was probably energy that if it was free probably would have made me a more attractive person, someone who was funny, someone who was present. Like it, it goes back to presence.

00:19:38 Courtney Brame: I just wasnt present with her. And so um yeah, we ended up never talking. We never reconnected. Uh I just I just had that moment of realizing like, damn, this is uh this had nothing to do with herpes. And yeah, that is my dating experience. So on positive singles um I remember being in uh the like chats and um being on the forums and everything and once I really immersed myself in it, I didn't have any problems dating. Like I never had to think about herpes again. And through positive singles like uh I met a lot of people who were long distance. Uh I did some traveling. people did some traveling to me. We met places. I got to go to New York for the first time. There was uh someone I met who was on one of these um she was on a show. I'm not going to say which show just in case that's a thing.

00:20:35 Courtney Brame: But um yeah, I remember that was a great time too. Like she took me to my first Broadway show. Like me I felt like the man when I was active on Positive Singles. And what's crazy is it wasn't feeling like the man because um because uh let me let me try and rephrase that. The reason that I felt like the man was um because I didn't have to think about herpes. And I don't know if me getting that diagnosis put me in this mindset of, you know, um I'm so… I'm so much less to where when I realized I was more that it was uh something that like I'm I'm going to try and paint this picture. Okay. So let's look at it from a positive and negative perspective, right? The or a depth in growth trees. The deeper the roots, the taller the tree. If you want to build a tall building, you have to have a very deep foundation, right?

The Slingshot Analogy and Launching the Podcast

00:21:42 Courtney Brame: So, take that same logic and apply it to a slingshot, right? If you have a slingshot, the further you're pulling back on the slingshot, whatever it is that you have in there, let's say it's a rock, right? If you pull it back a little bit and then you let it go, it doesn't go anywhere. If you create some tension and then you release it, it'll go somewhere. But the further you pull back, the more tension you create, it's like a negative force because you have to pull back in order to get to the uh the maximum tension. And then when you release that rock is going to go so much further. I use that analogy because of my herpes diagnosis and the experiences that I had after it, the negative ones was me pulling back and that was the creation of negativity because that was the energy I gave to it. And as soon as I was able to let go of that and be present with that, that's when I released and I began my flight forward into more of the positive space.

00:22:44 Courtney Brame: And so I say that because in the setting of online positive singles, what happened for me was I was able to release those negative thoughts about herpes because and and get a glimpse of it. I got a glimpse into what life was like that way because everybody had herpes and I the only issue that I had was people were so far like I hated having to make these 45 minute/hour-long drives or um make travel plans and flights and how expensive that was and uh uh but aside from that like I had very good experiences like and I was able to really be present with the people that I was being present with. So, as time went on, like I'm killing it. Like, I'm funny. I'm dating. My sex life is great. All of these things are good. Uh but the only issue, the only thing that really pulled me out of being able to really immerse myself into uh just being able to be present was how often I saw that there were people who wanted to kill themselves.

00:23:54 Courtney Brame: And so I see these people and at this point, you know, it's very early in 2017. Uh I moved back in February of 2017 to St. Louis and uh I was living with my grandmother again. And uh I was very active. I was active on the site. And I would say like by the spring before the summer started was when uh I picked up on that there was a pattern. There was a lot of people who were talking about suicide. And for me, you know, I'm like, why why there's why is there an issue? You know, if y'all are so upset about having herpes, uh, you're on this site, what's your issue? Why aren't you having a good time like me? And it really didn't hit me how serious people were about suicide until someone I had become friends with. Uh she expressed to me that her um boyfriend didn't have herpes, but she went in, she got tested and found out that she had it.

00:24:55 Courtney Brame: She never had any symptoms or anything. And when she told him, he was like, "All right, baby. Well, if you got it, we got it. Like, I'm here. Like, I ain't going nowhere." And she was successful. She was in her relationship and she really just wanted to have a guy connection so that if or when her boyfriend ended up having symptoms she'd be able to support him in the best way possible. So, one day we were chatting and I remember her telling me, she said, "You know, I was I'm suicidal. Like, I think about it from time to time." And I just was like, "Hold on. You got the relationship." People who I've spoken to before or who I see posting publicly that they want to end their lives because of their diagnosis. These people don't have the relationship and they want to do it because they just want the relationship. You telling me you got the relationship and you still want to kill yourself?

00:25:47 Courtney Brame: What? That doesn't make any sense to me. It did not compute at the time. So, it was then that I decided uh to begin trying to recruit people to be guests on the podcast. And I didn't know that it was going to be a podcast at the time. I just thought that uh I'd probably interview a person a month about their experience living with herpes. But, man, I did not know what I was signing up for. I made a post in one of the support groups that I found myself in and uh only one person replied and that was all it really needed. That was all it took. So me and my guest and at this point, you know, this is a story of Something Positive for Positive People. I do the interview with her, two complete strangers, we go through the whole scale of emotions from her uh having talked about this for the first time out loud.

00:26:40 Courtney Brame: You could just see her body language change and she became more free and we were able to just be present and have that conversation and it felt like an untangling of uh tentacles of trauma were unraveling throughout the entirety of the conversation. I share that podcast. I ask if anybody else wants to join and more people join and it went from me thinking one podcast a month to sometimes like four recordings in a week. And most recently, here we are in 2023, but this year I did four podcast recordings in a day. Four live, like sitting with the person and recording a podcast. Did four of those live when I was in New York? And um yeah, this has been my life over the last six years. It's been six years, y'all. I've been doing this s*** consistently. I tried not to cuss this podcast. f*** it. We here now. I've been doing this s*** for six years.

Friendship, Vulnerability, and Changing My Relationship to Herpes

00:27:37 Courtney Brame: And I'm proud of myself. I'm very f****** proud of myself because this is the longest I've stuck with anything other than football. Like I played football all through middle school, high school, college. Um until I just couldn't anymore. I knew I wasn't going to the league very early in college. I knew that super early. So I started to really uh I made sure to pay attention in school and focus on my grades. But um I want to point out here too because I'll forget. I don't know that there's really a place for this statement in how I'm about to continue to speak through this podcast, but I remember there was a day I was at my friend's house and this is important because I speak about identity validation and how important it is for you to be able to tell people who know you. If you struggling with herpes and herpes stigma, you have to be able to tell someone who knows you.

00:28:27 Courtney Brame: Telling Courtney is awesome, but I don't know you. All I can do is scroll through whatever you have on social media and use that as a way of connecting with you and validating your identity. It is going to take for someone you know to tell you. And you have to be willing to risk that relationship. You have to be willing to risk it. You have to be able to tell this person like, "Hey, I'm really struggling with this thing and I don't know what I need." And for that person to be like, "Man, I've known you for this long or you know that doesn't change anything about our relationship. You still you." and then you can begin whatever the next steps are for you. So for me, I think that this began when I was over at my friend's house and uh he's got a family now. Uh he's married, couple of kids, they had dogs, house and they had like a little a gathering and I remember I was sitting in the kitchen uh area on my phone looking down.

00:29:19 Courtney Brame: I was on one of the chat groups or whatever people with herpes and he said to me, he was like, "Hey man, you all right? You don't seem like yourself." And when he said that, I don't know how, but it started flashing these neurons in my head, in my brain, and I just had these moments of being like, damn, dude. This is someone who's known me for years. We played football together. We lived together. We done fought together. We done cried together. We done fought each other. Like this is a… this is someone I love who knows me significantly more than these complete strangers on the internet and yet I'm giving so much more of my presence to them online virtually than I am to these people around me who know me in real life and when I had that realization I think that that was when a a a wall or barrier became to uh became became a barrier began to come down for me.

00:30:21 Courtney Brame: And as that barrier began to come down, I think that was when I became more receptive to just telling the people around me like, "Hey, I'm struggling with this. This is uh, this is difficult for me." And between that and telling one of my best friends, he um cuz I it's funny cuz I think his his girls are the same age as my herpes and me situation, whatever, however we want to say it. But he had twins. I remember I was playing a game and he was like, "Man, I got twins on the way." I was like, "Damn, well, at least it ain't herpes." And uh it was Yeah. So, my herpes is a little bit older than his girls are. Oh, I remember that. And uh his reaction was, "Oh, damn. Well, uh I know somebody." He said one of his uh someone he knew. I ain't going to go into detail about how they knew each other cuz we had a thing for a while.

00:31:17 Courtney Brame: had herpes and we got together and she and I had a lot of fun together, but it took for me something completely unrelated to herpes to just have the thought of like, oh, I ain't really her type. I remember we were out one night and uh this dude had hit on her and I like walked away to go to the bathroom. I came back and I watched I was like, oh, she like this n**** like this is her type. And if you know how you know somebody's type is like it was a taller dude. dude had to be like 6'5. I'm on paper, okay, I've always been six foot and recently I've been seeing a lot of people who've been taller than me that I'm like a little bit taller than so I don't know if I had a second growth spurt or what, but I'm I'mma stick with six feet and then if your expectations are lower than when we get in reality, yeah, it's a bonus, but I ain't setting you up for failure thinking I'm taller than I really am.

00:32:10 Courtney Brame: And then we get next to each other, you like, "You ain't 6 '2." But I remember I had to go up to him. I was like, "Hey, man." I was like, "That's my girl." He was like, "Uhuh." I was like, I said, "Yeah, it is." He said, "What's that name?" I told him about her dad. He was like, "Oh, all right." And then he walked off. So, it was that night. I remember I was just like, "Ah, you like thug n***** and that ain't me." Like, I'm sorry. That just ain't going to work out. This ain't going to work out. And once I saw the end date, that was it. So, I ended up ending that relationship and I did it very passively. It was terrible the way I ended that relationship. I I wasn't s*** for that. Um and that kind of goes into another thing that maybe I'll have to cover on another podcast, but just like the way that I've developed as a person, you know, trying to be so nice and I get now I read this book called No More Mr. Nice Guy by Donald Glover.

00:33:09 Courtney Brame: Dude, it is not Donald Glover. Robert Glover, Donald Glover is Childish Gambino. And uh in this book, uh what he speaks about is like nice guy syndrome. And how being nice is such it's not a good thing. And you want to be kind. You want to have integrity, but like the way that I ended that relationship was absolutely not good. And I was just like letting her down easy, but that was sort of a slow death rather than just getting it over with quickly. Metaphorically, of course. Um, and it was because like me, I had this aversion to saying no. Like I haven't I wasn't able to say no because I don't like hearing no. So therefore, I don't want to tell other people no. And I honestly think that in hindsight, that's probably how I got herpes in the first place. Like flat out. I tell people, you know, we want to look at um whenever we're triggered, so to speak, look at the most recent time and then the first time that you experience whatever that feeling is and you'll pick up the pattern.

00:34:12 Courtney Brame: And so for me, what my pattern ended up being was this avoidance of rejection. I can remember that from childhood. And the way that I would avoid rejection was just by being nice, hoping that I would get an outcome that I want by just being there and being nice. And in doing that, you know, if I found myself in a situation I didn't want to be in, I would self-sabotage it in a way that was nice. And uh one of the things that Robert Glover speaks about in the book No More Mr. Nice Guy is, you know, being an integrated male. It's not being an alpha male. It's not being a sigma male. It's not being a beta male. None of that s***. It's just about integrity. When I say integration, it means like when I say integrate, it's like bringing these things in together. Um, but to also have integrity is like you have your system of values and you live according to that.

00:35:07 Courtney Brame: So this along with the Jordan Harbinger show, shout out to Jordan Harbinger. He was on a different podcast before going off on his own. And that podcast really did get me to understand my values and to create uh values and then begin to live according to those values. And in fact, I think it was his podcast that taught me about the book. And so um yeah, these were Oh man, I got I done all over the place. Sorry. Ah, I apologize. I'm excited. I'm really excited. The second half of this podcast was supposed to be me speaking about how uh living I'm living. I'm not living with herpes. I'm just living because I always say dating with herpes is just like dating. But like the emphasis on my life has not been dating. That's been a part of it. It's been living. I've been f****** living ever since um I decided to really accept that this was just something I was going to have to deal with.

00:36:05 Courtney Brame: And I think most people don't ever get to that point of just accepting that this is something that they're going to have to deal with and put it into its place. You got to put your herpes in its place. Okay? The only time you really need to think about it, unless you run the nonprofit and podcast and advocacy groups and support groups and all of that, is when you have to tell someone you have it or when you're having an outbreak. And even in those instances, there should be a system in place for you. Okay, I'm going I have to tell this person that I want to have sex with, I'm going to have her uh that I have herpes. I have to um tell this person that I'm having an outbreak or I have to take the medication for this outbreak I'm having. And that's it. We get up in our heads about rejection and everything, but the reality is you've got a 66.6 with a line over the top uh percent of not being rejected, right?

00:36:56 Courtney Brame: There are three responses that you'll get from a person when you tell them you have herpes. One's going to be no thanks and that's your rejection. The other one is going to be oh well tell me more like I'm still interested like what do we need to do? And then the third response is going to be I have it too. Okay. So these are your potential responses to rejection. And you got to like to put yourself in the position to uh accept that. Whether that be listening to the podcast and you hear other people's stories about experiencing metos and acceptances or else you might think that it's just going to be rejection because that's what you would do. You would reject someone for having herpes. And we don't want to have that conflict uh be addressed within ourselves because now the very thing that we would reject is the thing that we've become and we got to get through that.

00:37:47 Courtney Brame: Right? So um kind of wrapping up the point that I wanted to make. Um, I think that what I was trying to get at was how uh my girlfriend at the time who had uh tested negative and um we ended the relationship. Like she tested negative and then like that's when we broke up. To me, this was like this wasn't a big deal at the time because I just never dealt with it. And so more recently in December of 2021… um I had had sex with someone and I told her I had herpes. She knew I had herpes, followed me on Instagram, still follows me on Instagram actually. And um we talked, we talked about uh having sex and um she said she trusted me. We had sex, we went to sleep, we woke up, we had sex again, and then she left. And I remember she texted me like 3 hours later. She started looking up stuff about herpes and she was like, "I'm scared I'm going to have it." And I can't- I couldn't tell her,

00:38:47 Courtney Brame: "Hey, I didn't give you herpes and you won't get herpes." I couldn't tell her that because I don't know the statistics or whatever. Like they're not, they're not foolproof. And while yeah, we wore a condom. I wasn't having an outbreak. I know my status. I communicated with her and she seemed to be pretty healthy. I'm pretty healthy. So, the likelihood is low. I haven't passed it on to anybody else. I think that by now someone would have told me, but I couldn't give her that assurance that she wouldn't get herpes. And um what that ended up turning into was just this longer delayed rejection going back to the slingshot thing. Like I was already thinking I was like, "Hell yeah." Like I am, I'm here in Portland. Like I'm about to have a girlfriend. like this about to be a thing. Consistent. Uh, I like this person.

00:39:38 Courtney Brame: Uh she uh she she really made me feel uh what's the word that I'm looking for? Like I would be able to trust her to just not have to always be around her. She seemed like she had her own stuff going on and like I could have my stuff going on. I was excited about this. And going back to that slingshot analogy now, the more negative you get and when you let go, the more positive you can get. Same on the inverse. So my slingshot was going back into positivity, excitement, expectations, and then that s*** got let go when, you know, uh I realized that it wasn't going to where I thought it would. So I had to let that go. And man, that was like that was hurtful. That was the most hurtful thing. So, I had to ask myself, I was like, "Damn, why does this hurt so bad?" And it was the fact that I was accepted,

00:40:33 Courtney Brame: quote unquote, and then rejected because it sent me on this pathway of like going into a high. And that high just set me up for a greater fall. You know, taller the uh the deeper the roots, the taller the branches. The taller the building, the deeper the foundation, right? So, take away the tree roots and the tree branches and all you got is a f****** free fall. And that's what happened. like the negativity um or the yeah the positivity that I had for myself set up. I was floating, getting higher and higher. And then when she hit me with reality, that s*** it just took me down into just free falling into negativity. And you know, getting out of that, you know, arguably uh took a lot longer than it should have. But when I was able to trace it back to when was the first time I got this accepted and rejected. When was the last time?

00:41:29 Courtney Brame: It goes back to that relationship where midsex midstroke I had to stop because she didn't want to get herpes. She learned that she didn't have it. Uh cuz we'd been having sex and we didn't always use condoms. But uh she was just like she was given a second chance at life and that was you know I have to accept that. So seeing how that played out for me, like I I think that one of the things that I've learned is to have a much more in-depth like process for uh pers perspective prospective partners. Uh and that's something that I had never thought of before. But also like um there was somewhere I was going with this and I lost it. I probably should have taken some notes. But this to me just feels better to speak from the heart regardless of how little or how much sense it makes because even despite those experiences, like I'm still I'm still here. And even since then, like I've dated, I've had sex, I've had a few relationships.

00:42:36 Courtney Brame: Um, and I've very much learned that I can't put all this emphasis on, and I'm going to like to go through it because first the emphasis was mostly on herpes. Underneath that, the emphasis was on being in a relationship. Underneath that, the emphasis was a girl. It was always like women, girls, whatever. And when I began to change my relationship to herpes, my relationship to relationships, my relationships to women, all of those things changed based on my relationship with my with something positive for positive people. f***, man. I got to say it. I got to say it. It wasn't really something positive. It was herpes. It was actually herpes, right? So the core of this relationship is with herpes because once that relationship changed, everything else was affected. All right? And it really did take for me to see how my friends didn't treat me any differently after they knew uh which gave me permission to not treat myself any different after uh telling my friends that I had herpes.

The Iron Man and Venom Analogies

00:43:46 Courtney Brame: So I use this analogy. I used to talk about like how uh the Iron Man analogy, if you listen to the Iron Man episode, if you Google anytime you like want to look up something specific on Something Positive for Positive People, let's say you have a topic that you want to check on like rejection, type in Google SPFPP rejection and the episodes that talk about rejection that have that in like the uh episode description, those are going to come up. Just a little hack for if you are looking for anything in particular. If you're looking for disclosure, SPFPP disclosure, Google that and you'll see episodes in relation to that. So anyway, uh I talk about the Iron Man analogy, how you know Tony Stark made the Iron Man suit and became Iron Man, right? So Courtney made H on my chest and it became Something Positive for Positive People, right? And it was out of necessity, you know, that you saw this character develop throughout the course of the Iron Man movies, the Avenger movies.

00:44:51 Courtney Brame: You saw Iron Man's character develop, right? And he got really attached to who he was as Iron Man, but at the end of it all, Iron Man just saved the day. It was Tony Stark who saved the world, right? So my analogy here, um, the parallel here for me is that I'm Courtney. Yes, I got herpes and that turned me into H on my chest. There's been a lot of good that's been done through me being H on my chest, aka putting on the Iron Man suit. However, at the core of it all, like when people reach out to me, when I talk to people, when I'm interviewing, like the alias of H on my chest, that's who saves the day, right? But the person that people hear from when they talk to me, when they reach out to me, when we connect and we're able to like have conversations and they feel supported. That's Courtney. That was my old analogy. Now I got an even better one, right?

00:45:50 Courtney Brame: And I forgot all of the details of it because now I'm wrapped up in this analogy about uh Eddie Brock and Venom. So Eddie Brock is a character from Spider-Man, which was my favorite cartoon TV show growing up. Uh because Spider-Man was like the most relatable. He was a nerd. I'm a nerd. He was uh he went to college. I was planning on going to college and he was a kid and he liked, you know, he was very self-aware and like uh speaking. He would think out loud or talk to himself and he would talk through his conflicts. There was always some type of an internal conflict, but he would always, you know, get through it. So anyway, um Eddie Brock is introduced. Eddie Brock is a nobody. Well, the Eddie Brock that's in the movies now is different from the one from the cartoons, but uh Eddie Brock was a loser, so to speak. And it was after he came in contact with this f****** parasite called a symbiote.

00:46:50 Courtney Brame: It's an alien and it's very intelligent. It's old. like it's a sentient being. Uh he comes into contact with it and they merge and when they merge they become something greater. They become venom. So Eddie Brock is Courtney Brame. Symbio is HSV Herpes and then when they come together they form Venom aka H on my chest, right? And that is like something that I really resonate with because when they came together, they got superpowers. And this thing that was a parasite, this thing that, you know, he didn't want, wanted to get rid of, it actually gave him powers. And the thing was killing him, of course, because that's what parasites do. But they learn to get along and have a symbiotic relationship. So, it wasn't just this idea that um um I didn't need to say that part. So, what it really became was they got super strength. Uh they got faster, they were strong, and they could do a bunch of cool s***.

Saving My Health and Finding Purpose

00:48:04 Courtney Brame: Same thing with me. Like me, I look at it and you know I don't know that I've told a lot of people this, but having herpes made me not be diabetic. The way that I was eating and the way that I understand food and nutrition now is completely different. Like what people don't know is um like my I got diabetes in my family out the ass. My great-grandma, my grandfather on my uh dad's side, I think my grandmother on my dad's side had it. And then um on my mom's side, I think they are good cuz they don't really Yeah, they just don't eat a lot at all anymore. But um it wasn't the sugar like everybody was like cut out sugar, don't drink soda, blah blah blah because sugar uh like we turn uh we burn sugar as energy, as an energy source. So like that's the default. Oh well, I'm gonna burn off the sugar. But it's the carbs turning into sugar that turn into uh like energy that we just can't absorb.

00:49:08 Courtney Brame: Like we produce insulin whenever we're consuming meals and if we have too many carbs in one sitting like I was doing before I saw a nutritionist. I remember I was trying to eat like no meat every other day. And all I ended up doing was consuming like three times the amount of carbohydrates and not doing anything to burn them off. So, I'm eating like mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, bread, and uh another starch of some sort, and I'm not doing I'm not doing myself any good. So, anyway, I remember having an outbreak after I had too much, too much sugar, too much sugar, too many carbs. And I ended up going to the doctor just for a checkup, and he was like, "Hey, man, your blood sugar is really really like that line. You're not diabetic. You're not pre-diabetic, but you're like right there. So, when I asked him about it, he was like, "Oh, yeah." Because I had changed up my workout. I wasn't burning as many carbs as I normally would.

00:50:03 Courtney Brame: So, when I remember having that outbreak uh from having all these sugary ass drinks and carbs over this weekend, when I had that outbreak, I was like, "Oh, I think that sugar might be a trigger. Let me watch my sugar." Right? And so watching that and then having gone to the doctor like four months later, if I didn't have to make that change, I probably would have crossed over that threshold into being uh diabetic. And I'm super grateful for herpes because I know diabetes medication is expensive. I know that that comes with a lot of different complications, but like having herpes literally like because my body being healthy is also something that herpes depends on. This probably isn't the only thing that lives in me, on me, whatever. Uh, I'm sure, but having had herpes for as long as I've had it, this has been something that has contributed to my overall well-being, my health, right? Um, my when I had COVID, the two times I had it, uh, I didn't die. I don't know if there's any sort of science out there that's going to speak to how uh having herpes uh influences other viruses that you might get or come into contact with.

00:51:21 Courtney Brame: But I did do a Google search on the benefits of having herpes. And there is like uh it sort of keeps your immune system uh exercising so to speak because herpes is such a tricky virus, right? But uh damn, I was not supposed to talk for 51 minutes about any of this. I'm supposed to come on here and tell y'all, "Hey, y'all got to live y'all f****** lives, man." Um, lots of conversations that I've been having lately with different people uh have been um less about herpes and more about the things that uh their energy, their attention, their time and their money have gone on towards herpes and more about uh their life experiences. Right? I know people who've thrown a significant amount of money at cures and uh research and hopes for a cure. I'm going to tell you this, man. If when I first got diagnosed with herpes, I started to like hope for a cure and invest my money, energy, attention, and time, co shout out coach Greg Adams, protect your meat.

00:52:23 Courtney Brame: Uh if I would have thrown all of that at herpes exclusively, it would have been 10 years. It would have been 10 years had gone by and ain't no cure. So, y'all got to stop doing that s***. Don't Don't do that. Oh, well, I hope we come out with a cure soon. That ain't going to do anything for you. Stop trying to find a way to live with herpes and just live. You got to be living. Since I got diagnosed with herpes, and I talk about the venom analogy, right? You know, me and my herpes get along and I don't have to think about it. It's just that I choose to do the work that I do. I choose this because I'm f****** passionate about it. Because it does give me a sense of purpose. Because I don't burn out from this. This is something like Kevin Gay say, I don't get tired when it come to this s***.

00:53:11 Courtney Brame: I don't get tired until I start deviating in the s*** that I really don't care for. I want to talk to people. I want to interview people on a podcast. I want to be of support to folks who reach out and I want to see y'all do better. Um, one of my people who went through the therapy, right? She's buying a house. She's She's just She's buying a house with her boyfriend and she's been through a lot of other s*** as well. But I'm so happy to see that and hear that. I didn't hear from people who uh I think since calling out not hearing from people who have gone on to get married. And I heard from people who have gone on to be in very happy and healthy, successful relationships, who've gone on to have babies, um to have families, to be doing the things that they really want to be doing. I heard uh from one of the guys that I interviewed recently, man.

00:54:02 Courtney Brame: He sent me I almost cried listening to this s***. He sent me a voice message that um he was like, you know, I heard you say and and this is so wild because I'm I've been very resistant to just sharing my own experience, but this man reached out who I had already interviewed and he was like, yo, you know, your Something Positive for men episode, you know, it was something that really it it touched me and you know, it made me realize like I got to stop, you know, living for this virus, living for herpes and like being scared. Like I just got to do it. I got to live my life. And that's my overall message to everybody. I want for you to be able to come here, get what you need, leave because it is only significant when it's significant. So if you're having an outbreak, if you have to tell somebody, these are really the only two times that you have to think about herpes. Unless you're running a nonprofit podcast or advocacy support group, social media page, then you got to think about what am I going to post?

00:54:57 Courtney Brame: I got to renew the website this year. How much money I got in the account? Can I pay for this? uh how do I get people to show up to these things that I'm doing? Like you you ain't got to think about all that s***. All you have to do is live. Y'all live. Please live for me. If you can't do nothing else, if you can't donate, if you can't uh do a podcast episode, if you can't point me in a direction of grants, funding opportunities to continue to expand this work, then I want you to just live. Right? That's where this came from. I don't want people with herpes to kill themselves. I don't want people with herpes to feel like they have to kill themselves. I don't want people struggling with their mental health because of their herpes diagnosis. You know, feel your initial feelings. Listen to these podcasts.

00:55:42 Courtney Brame: Reach out to me. Get into whatever sort of mental health support resources you need and then go on about your business. Live life. I've been out of the country twice. I've done more traveling as a result of becoming quote venom, right? being being H on my chest and like I've had more experiences that are completely unrelated to herpes since having herpes uh and since deciding to go ahead and just like not let this s*** influence me. I had more sexual experiences, more relationship experiences, more travel experiences. I ate f****** ostrich this week. Like I ostriches are like dinosaurs. I ate f****** dinosaur meat basically. I don't know how accurate that is, but like that's what I'm doing. Like I'm recording this. I'm on another continent right now. I am across the ocean. I'm in South Africa right now recording this.

00:56:42 Courtney Brame: I saw lions like 10 feet away from me. I f****** touched elephants, three of them at the same time. Um I looked at giraffes that look like llamas, actually. They look like llamas. Uh the way they be chewing. Um, I seen rhinos. I never thought I'd see f****** rhinos in my life. I got to see rhinos, y'all. Like, ah, come on. We If I can do this s***, you can, too. I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, Ferguson specifically, where everybody, all the protests and s*** were happening about Mike Brown. Like, n***** like me ain't supposed to be damn near 35 years old and on another continent talking about uh eating ostrich. I was talking to Carl about this. He said it too. He said, "n***** from North County ain't supposed to be doing this." And I am. And it was like in a very empowering, powerful way uh that we were having this conversation.

00:57:36 Courtney Brame: But that's the thing, man. Like I ain't I wasn't supposed to make it past 25. Kanye West in those first albums like when everybody was rocking with him, he wasn't lying. He was right. And you know, Tupac said, he was like, "Uh, I just hope to make it past this certain age." And I'm feeling like I'm living life overtime. I am in overtime right now. And it's, as much as I've been trying to like to downplay my herpes diagnosis, it's because of the experiences that came after my herpes diagnosis. So, I'm living and I want you to, too. I want you to live as well. Um, stop giving so much of your energy to herpes. If the energy that you gave to your herpes diagnosis and having herpes were to be applied to something else, what would it be? If you even decide, okay, I'm going to give myself one hour per week uh on herpes and let that be, you know, you can meditate, you can listen to a podcast episode because I mean, I do weekly episodes.

00:58:47 Courtney Brame: Um, you can listen to this and then you can just have your cry, you can make your jokes, you can laugh, whatever you gonna do. Give yourself like x amount of time that you're going to dedicate to herpes and then see what else you got going on. Right? The most useful support resources to me uh navigating the herpes stigma have been self-help books. I've listened to uh I mentioned No More Mr. Nice Guy, but Letting Go by David R. Hawkins, Psychocybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. When I started to understand just how much of this was in my control because of where I directed my attention, it changed things for me. Now, my focus ain't on herpes. My focus ain't on uh on women necessarily anymore. Like, my focus is on me, my purpose. I know that I enjoy traveling and uh since like decluttering my mind from the distractions that were herpes, that were um making an effort to date and hook up with as many people as I could.

00:59:53 Courtney Brame: Like all that s***'s gone. And I ain't going to say it's been gone for a long time, but ever since like not making those things a priority, this has grown. Something Positive for Positive People has grown. And that's important to me because it's almost like I've sort of removed myself from the symbiote suit and just put Venom into Something Positive for Positive People while being able to hold on to Courtney. I was able to separate the Iron Man suit from Tony Stark and just be Tony. And so recognizing that I'm the person that's curating this space. I'm the one that's bringing uh the guests on. I'm the one that's keeping everything running and up and running and facilitating all the behind the scenes stuff cuz like there's a lot of stuff that happens real deep in this that y'all have no reason to know about. And on the surface like y'all just see the outcomes and y'all contribute. You see people's contributions. Um but behind the scenes there's a lot more to Something Positive for Positive People than what I can share cuz some s*** just don't feel right sharing.

Big Moves: Paying Myself and Moving Home

01:00:58 Courtney Brame: I do a lot of voice messages and it'd be a lot to have to go through those and try and put those into um fundraising tools and social media posts. So, I want y'all to just know, man, I'm doing the work. And um even with that said, like I'm very proud to be We're past an hour. I don't usually like to go over an hour, but I'm going to wrap this up here shortly. Um, I've not wanted to pay myself through this and I'm very much having a difficult time with that, but uh, I'm putting myself in the situation because I know myself to be the kind of person who when I have to do something, I will do something. So, I made a decision. I'm going to be leaving Portland, Oregon. I'm going to move back to St. Louis, Missouri. Uh there's a number of reasons for this, but mainly that uh it's the grant that I received is over. So, I can't justify staying in Portland, Oregon, making the amount of money that I make part-time.

01:01:56 Courtney Brame: Like, it's been great. I've been able to live and live it up and travel, but it's time for me to go home. Like I want to definitely put my focus onto growing Something Positive for Positive People into something that is and will be a sustainable career for me. Continuing to expand this support resource into different um hospitals, urgent cares, emergency rooms, so that when people are diagnosed, they at least have this as a starting point and uh I'll be able to just continue to make a career out of this. I'm working part-time continuing to teach the genital exams and uh work as a standardized patient working with medical students to um support them through being able to interact with patients. So yeah, this work is far more expansive than just me talking about herpes. So, like when y'all do contribute, when y'all let me interview y'all, when y'all share your thoughts and experiences and you make donations, like y'all contribute to a lot more s*** than you know. And I'm so grateful.

01:02:58 Courtney Brame: I want to shout out to Dr. Evelin Dacker. I want to shout out to the uh Little Nest Fund. I can't say her name um for their donations of 50 totaling $55,000. Dr. Dacker gave 50 and then the Little Nest Fund gave 5,000. And this put me in a position where now I can approach the board about actually paying myself. We've had conversations about this before. They want me to pay myself, but now um I have to put myself in a position where I have to. So I'm deciding to move back home to St. Louis, Missouri, finding my own place and still continuing to, you know, live my life and travel because for so long I felt like, you know, I don't really belong. I didn't feel like I belonged in St. Louis. I didn't feel like I belonged in Portland. And rather than continuing to look for where home is, I think I realized that really what it is is that I needed to just get away from time to time.

01:03:54 Courtney Brame: Like my extreme, going back to the um slingshot analogy, like that tension building was just like the monotony of being at home and being complacent. The complacency just builds the longer that I sit into a place. So rather than me moving to a new place all the f****** time, all I got to do is get out and travel. Because even traveling now, like this episode was able to come through me, I was able to calm the routine from around me and get out of my routine, allowing for my inner voice to come up and say, "Hey, Courtney, how long has it been that you had herpes? When is your when when when is it coming up on 10 years for you for me to go through look through these messages and find out, oh, it was this day?" and then be able to bring out this podcast episode, you know, like I I need to make more space and more time for these kinds of things. So, I'm giving myself more things to look forward to.

01:04:46 Courtney Brame: I'm giving myself permission to pay myself and get out of this um scarce mindset of all right, I got to work as much as I possibly can so that I can continue to do this for free. Um, and yeah, like I do believe um and I'll I'll probably share the story about why I'm moving in more detail, but I don't think that that belongs here necessarily. Um, but yeah, live y'all live, right? Like we are living. We ain't just living with herpes, y'all. We living. And I hope that that comes across in the episode title. If this is something that resonates with you, I want you to tell me how you are living. Comment on the post. Let me know how you're living. Um, message me if you're less comfortable with posting publicly and let me know how you're living. I don't I don't give a f*** about herpes. Like, we passed that at this point.

01:05:36 Courtney Brame: I'm living proof. I'm putting my life out there for y'all to see that you can live your life. Period. And herpes can be such an insignificant factor in that, right? I want y'all to know this. I love you. I want y'all to continue to uh just expand. Stop looking for resources for herpes. You found it. Now look at those resources that I'm telling you about. The audio books, the books, the taking of classes. Um I'm doing more of these workshop type things and speaking engagements and things like that. So if you have something for me to speak about, please tell me. And also um if you want to participate in like live podcast recordings, I'll probably start doing those virtually as well. But, um, I'm gonna have to get my place and settle into it. And I'm excited. I'm moving back to St. Louis.

01:06:29 Courtney Brame: Um, Washington University gave me a job as a standardized patient, uh, which is a role that I had in Portland, Oregon, as well as teaching the genital exams. I'm going to keep my, uh, genital exam, teaching trainer job as well. And I'll just travel back to Portland for that because the way that it pays, it works out, uh, to where it's still profitable for me to be able to travel back and forth. So, I love y'all. I thank y'all. Thank you for being here. Thank you for keeping me uh keeping me honest, accountable, uh, and consistent. All right. And, uh, yeah, I look forward to just connecting with as many as y'all as I can. Um, but yeah, my focus now is definitely on continuing to expand Something Positive and uh build my I won't say build my career necessarily, but like make this my primary career cuz I'm I'm very much looking to begin the process of starting a family. Like I'm in that planning process and I want to be able to have roots planted and then be able to invite somebody in, you know, who I'm ready for, who's also ready for this themselves, who's also a fit. So, um, thank y'all. Thank y'all for listening. Thank y'all for being here and just seeing my growth over the last six years, cuz I tell you, like between three and s***, even last year, I wasn't ready for that. Like, I was having too much fun. Still am.

Transcription ended after 01:08:24