Like Townsend—who works as an HIV Prevention Manager and is a Philadelphia transplant—Edmond, a Gary, Indiana native and an HIV Peer Support Specialist at THRIVE SS relocated to Atlanta in 2015 in search of community, which he found through Undetectables Atlanta (UA); a private Facebook group that provides support and brotherhood for Black queer men living with HIV. It was through the THRIVE SS/UA network that the duo soon became a trio.

Enter Thaddeus Works, 56, a retired law enforcement professional whose routine visits to the THRIVE SS headquarters in Southwest Atlanta where he’d often see Edmond, wave hello, and then continue with his day, all of a sudden became less routine.

“I met Darriyhan three years ago. He was working with THRIVE [SS] and I used to come into the office and throw my hands up [in a gesture to say hello],” Works said. “And then one day I was talking to Larry [Walker, Executive Director of THRIVE SS]. I was trying to give Larry a hug, and I opened my arms and Darriyhan came up and hugged me. So that's how that happened,” he said.

In recent years, when the title of elder has been placed upon me, I’ve always rejected it. Not just because I felt too young, but also because I believed that being an elder was something you earned. And I did not believe I’d earned it yet. I still don’t.

What I have come to understand is that much of being an elder is really about who survives, and who is left to tell the story. In this sense, being an elder for me seems to be about loss, loneliness, and grief. It’s a reminder of the collective trauma that we as Black gay men and so many marginalized communities face—the war that was waged against us, against our bodies and desires that forced too many of us to become ancestors before we became elders. And for those of us remaining—left to become elders prematurely.

In 1999, the blocks between 10th street and 14th street in Midtown Atlanta was the world I entered. This is where I found community, made friends, earned enemies, felt desired and rejected, built community, mourned community, and ultimately became politicized in a way that is no longer possible. This is where I became an activist. This is where I became a leader; my origin story, if you will. Entering that world for me was like visiting Narnia.

Before meeting her wife, Paulette Martin worried about aging alone.

She was 40, single, and recently out to her children. What she knew was that she didn’t want to become a burden in her golden years. She was worried about who would take on the responsibility of caring for her.

Fast forward some years, Paulette moved from Hawaii to New York in 2014. She desired connections with other Black LGBTQ elders and heard of SAGE, a national organization committed to advocacy and services for LGBTQ elders. They were having a party and needed volunteers for setup. It was also where she met Pat, her wife of four years.

“I was helping to put together swag bags for the party which Pat was hosting,” Paulette told The Reckoning. “As we were putting things together, I noticed that people were talking over Pat.”

Somewhat frustrated, she spoke up.

“I told them you all should submit to Pat. She knows what she is doing. I didn’t even know her.”

Then just a fresh-faced youth, Atlanta lesbian Charlotte Hubbard spent her early 20s attending the city’s legendary Black gay pride celebration — one of the few places where she felt she could truly exhale.

“I loved just being in a place where I’m not seeking acceptance,” Hubbard says. “Just being able to be free felt really good.”

Then something shifted. Fist fights seemed to rise. The carefree vibe seemed to diminish. Eventually, for Hubbard, it stopped feeling like home.

“The turning point was when I was at Piedmont Park and every other corner I turned, there was a fight,” says Hubbard, who at 37, hasn’t attended Black Pride in a decade. “I said, ‘I can’t do this’.”

In 1989, Malcolm Reid, 63, had gone to so many funerals that he lost count. He remembers being so emotionally exhausted from burying friends he decided during those early days to stop attending funerals altogether. The clock was ticking towards his demise, or so he thought.

“Well, I'm next,” Reid recalls thinking. “And when the next person died, I was like, I'm next. And that never happened. And I remember asking myself, why did they die and I'm still here?”

It would be another eight years, in 1997, before Reid would learn that he acquired HIV. But his story would not mirror those of his friends whom he laid to rest, instead, it would become the impetus he needed to co-create The Silver Lining Project, a group that would impact his life and the lives of Black gay men living with HIV, particularly those over 50 who are often rendered invisible in the broader Black gay community.

I have survived being abused as a child. Physically by my father in the form of discipline because that was all he knew and called it love and sexually by a teenage cousin exploring the surge of testosterone while taking advantage of a younger cousin who was sensitive and “ different.” I don’t feel mentally or emotionally burdened by either situation.

In my walk from young adulthood to now, I’ve learned a lot about myself. Before landing in Washington, D.C. 24 years ago in 1995, no one told me how challenging that phase of life would be as I came to grips with accepting my sexuality, which was anything but a straight line.  I had no roadmap to figure out what was happening or how to navigate any of it. Back then, any literature that was black, gay adjacent that I could get my hands on, I read. It wasn’t until I discovered the works of E. Lynn Harris and James Earl Hardy that some of what I had been carrying around regarding my sexuality started to make any kind of sense. As liberating as that felt, it was also terribly confusing.

There is something about the age of 50 that changes you. For some, there is dread and a sense of disappointment with the lack of accomplishment. While others are motivated to begin living their lives with a sense of purpose. For me, it was a little of both.

I reached the age of 50 on September 17, 2007. I was well into my career in IT and 10 years into my relationship with my now-husband, Stewart. I began feeling anxious; material possessions, a beautiful home, a stable relationship, and an active social life were no longer enough. I needed more, I was at the beginning of a journey. A journey to find my purpose. A dream that is just being implemented today.

Thinking about what I would write when speaking about HIV and aging for me has been a journey of self-reflection. I can't acknowledge all I have been through without genuinely reflecting on “That Day”  I was diagnosed. You see, I never thought I would make it to 25 years of age. I truly thought my life was over, and there was nothing left to do but wait for my inevitable death. For three years after my initial diagnosis, I lived to die.

It was New Year’s Eve, 1995. Essex Hemphill, Easy-E, and Glenn Burke had all died of complications from AIDS in the past few months. A shadow of death was all around the Bay Area. Still, life went on, at least for some of us in San Francisco. A few friends had gathered in an apartment to wrest whatever happiness we could from an end of the year celebration.

We later discovered that 1995 was the peak for AIDS-related deaths in the U.S. It claimed over 41,000 Americans that year.