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 An Interview with Marisa
The Item, a South Carolina Newspaper, had an interview with Marisa Pollak of Sworn.org
This interview appeared on Saturday, May 4th 2002, and was written by Features Writer Sara Gerald Fludd
The "princess of herpes" educates others about the chronic disease
Recent shoulder surgery has not slowed the undisputed princess of herpes down one bit. Marisa has taken the herpes world by storm since she bought a computer in 1999.
Using her own personal experiences as a platform, Marisa issues advice online and travels the country attending various herpes social functions and conferences. The former hairdresser and nightclub emcee decided to use her public position to educate others about the disease that once threatened to ruin her life.
"It was the hardest day of my life," she said. "Instead of doing my normal comedy routine, I started talking about STDs." "It was pretty cool. It was scary as hell," she said of the experience. After that first public forum, Marisa found that many people begin to feel differently about having herpes when they discover they are not alone.
"The first time I said it, it was freeing. I spent 14 and half years of my life, literally not telling anybody if I didn't have to," Marisa said. "I avoided relationships. I hated myself. I hated living. I thought about suicide."
Marisa eventually told her parents who have become her biggest supporters. Her dad describes her as the "Mother Teresa of STDs." "I had to tell my parents. They thought it was drugs because my behavior so drastically changed," she explained. "I became a victim of the virus. I ran away with the local carnival and began a life that was about waiting to die."
Marisa spends a lot of time in her California hometown distributing flyers and other informational materials about herpes. "I met a girl last year who got the virus at age 20. When I met her she was ready to run away from her family," she said. After spending one day with Marisa, the young woman began to see her situation differently and realized that her life could go on without leaving her family.
Marisa recently left a job with a herpes education group, to begin her own site, www.sworn.org. "Part of SWORN's mission is we want to change the way people are told about STDs. We want to educate the public," she said.
"It's time that we stopped not talking. It's time we break the silence," Marisa said. "When you think about what the silence does, it locks you into this little box. You don't live."
One therapeutic exercise she advises people to do is to look in the mirror and say their name and some of their wonderful qualities. "Then say, "So what, I have herpes, herpes, herpes, herpes, herpes." Every time you say an STD out loud, it has less and less power, "she said.
Reproduced with kind permission of The Item newspaper, South Caroliina.
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