Nine is significant again for me this week - as I lie here in bed with my cat on my chest, I’m reminded that we lay in exactly this position nine years ago in the first days after my release from the hospital where AIDS tried to end me. I am now a nine-year AIDS survivor.

To many in this age of ART and PrEP, that doesn’t mean much - AIDS is not a foregone conclusion from an HIV diagnosis anymore, and AIDS need not be a death sentence. It wasn’t mine.

But it almost was.

I was born in 1966, just in time to come of age when sex was terrifying because it could be deadly. Some divine Providence must have been watching over me to make me such a (ridiculously) late bloomer - if I had awakened sexually at the same time as my peers I strongly suspect I would have become promiscuous at a very dangerous time, and likely would have faced AIDS under much less favorable odds. Which is to say, I wouldn’t be an AIDS survivor at all.

When the clock strikes nine, we get a sense of progress; the morning is fully underway; the evening has matured. It is past the time for beginnings, but not quite the time of winding down. As it happens, my AIDS anniversary is in September - month number nine - so particularly significant this year. The ninth month is like the ninth hour, a place somewhere between the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. No longer summer, but not yet really autumn. The leaves are tired, but not ready yet to fall.

I’m tired. The battle takes it out of you. My doctor changed my HIV med in August from Biktarvy to Juluca. I used to have my alarm set to go off at 9:00pm every night to remind me to take my Biktarvy before bed, and I never missed a dose. Juluca must be taken in the morning, with food, so I’ve had to forcibly break habits and forcibly make new ones. It’s not as easy as it sounds. I can’t skip breakfast now, ever. And to make sure I don’t forget to take a pill along with it, I set my alarm to go off every day at 9:00am. I haven’t missed a dose. No aid or comfort to the Enemy Virus.

The thing about a clock striking 9:00pm, though, is that you realize the night is no longer young, and you begin to think about when - and how - it will end. It’s hard for me to think about an ending that doesn’t have HIV wrapped up in it, degrading the quality of my life. I cannot go a single, solitary day that I am not reminded, like clockwork, that I am an AIDS survivor, and that both the virus and the meds that hold it at bay gnaw at my insides and speed the ticking of my clock toward its final tick.

The stroke of nine feels like a momentary intermission before the final act begins.

Not dead yet, though. I’m not giving the goddamn thing another chance. Tune in at 10:00 for a live update.