Seven months after Ella Dawson says she was diagnosed with genital herpes, she remembers a young man at a college party offering her a sip of his beer. “Don’t worry,” she recalled him saying. “I don’t have herpes or anything.”
Dawson, 22, was just learning to shed the shame that came with her infection, which affects one in six Americans. She could already tell this sense of isolation was worse than any outbreak. So, she spoke up — and shared the tale in a Women’s Health essay, published this week: 'That’s funny,’ I said, with as warm a smile as I could manage. ‘Yeah, that’s really funny. Because I have genital herpes.’ His face crumbled. Not because I grossed him out — I could practically see the wheels turning in his brain as he realized he’d made an ignorant joke at someone else’s expense. The guy started apologizing profusely.Read more in the Washington Post.
