My name is Dan Merces, and I am 23 years old.

There was a moment in my life when everything changed. A moment that could have shattered me. But instead, I chose to gather every broken piece and build something more substantial, more honest, more alive.

That moment was my HIV diagnosis.

At the time, I was living alone, working, and studying to become a nurse. I was already carrying the weight of navigating the world as a trans woman in the Amazon region of Brazil. In this place, healthcare is a privilege, not a right, and being trans means being invisible or unsafe in most medical spaces.

When I found out I was HIV positive, the ground didn’t just shake, it split. But I didn’t fall through. I stood up, walked into an NGO for the first time, and told a room full of strangers, “Since I’m positive, I want to do something with this. I want to stay in the hype. I want to live my life with positivity.”

And I meant it.

But it wasn’t easy.

Access to care was a constant battle. The system isn’t built for people like me. In the Amazon, health services are scattered, underfunded, and often wholly unprepared to support trans people, let alone trans people living with HIV. I had to push harder, dig deeper, and search longer to access the care that others took for granted.

Still, I pushed on. I didn’t stop my education. I didn’t drop out of college. I carried HIV with me into the classroom, not as shame, but as knowledge, something to teach from, to grow from. I told my professors. I told my classmates. I made sure HIV wasn’t just a shadow in the corner, but something we discussed, faced, and understood.

I brought it into the curriculum. Into the nursing labs. Into the spaces where future healthcare providers would be formed and maybe, just maybe, become more compassionate because they knew someone like me.

Being trans never held me back in my course. I believe that the way I carry myself, with purpose, openness, and an undeniable will to learn, draws good people toward me. I show up. I work hard. I prove that my identity doesn’t limit me; it deepens me.

Still, the stigma lingers. In some spaces, I talk openly about living with HIV. In others, I choose to educate without disclosing my identity. Because in Brazil, as a trans woman with HIV, people try to reduce you to a box that you are in, as just that. But I am more. I am many things. And I speak not just from experience, but from knowledge.

During my internships, I led discussions about sexual health, self-care, and prevention. I saw how urgently we need this, how many people are still afraid, still misinformed.

I’m lucky my hormone therapy is medically supervised. It’s a slow, intentional process. Each step brings me closer to my reflection, closer to my truth. And it began right after my HIV diagnosis. Because HIV didn’t stop me, it revealed me.

That moment, that diagnosis, forced me to look at myself thoroughly: physically, emotionally, spiritually. And in that mirror, I saw the woman I had always been. HIV didn’t break me. It awakened me.

It became my ignition. My turbine. My reason for diving deeper into myself and rising stronger.

So when I say I live with HIV, I say it without shame. It’s a part of me. But it does not define me.

What defines me is that I kept going. I transformed. I refused to be reduced. I took what the world tried to use against me and turned it into a source of power.

I didn’t break.

I became.