A woman who often candidly speaks about living with herpes has shared that she wants to ‘normalise’ it despite trolls trying to make her feel ashamed.
Suzanna Brusikiewicz has racked up 233,000 TikTok followers for sharing what life is like with the STD (sexually transmitted disease).
Previously, she told Daily Star that she enjoys a normal sex life despite trolls – who are all men – declare that she is "damaged goods".
READ MORE: Woman with two vaginas says sex can be 'excruciatingly painful' for her lovers
Despite what the naysayers have to say, Suzanna has set out to show that having herpes doesn’t mean that she can’t live her life to the fullest.
In a recent TikTok video, a troll urged her to not ‘normalise’ and ‘destigmatise’ the condition after she shared another clip on the matter – and Suzanna was certainly not going to tolerate any hate.
As she filmed herself in the mirror, she replied: “So you think that somehow I misspoke or poorly worded my sentence when I said in many videos that my goal is to destigmatise and normalise herpes. That sounds like a greatly worded sentence to me.
"And, I am going to normalise it and I don’t have to normalise it because its already normal, hun.
“I say this so often, but I’ll say it again.”
Suzanna then listed off some statistics about herpes to show that it is more common than some think.
She added: “67% of the world has HSV-1.”
According to WHO (World Health Organisation), this fact is correct in regards to people under the age of 50 – an estimated 3.7billion people have the disease.
The WHO also reported: “An estimated 491million people aged 15–49 (13%) worldwide have HSV-2 infection.”
“HSV-1 is mainly transmitted by oral-to-oral contact, causing oral herpes (including symptoms known as cold sores), but it can also lead to genital herpes. HSV-2 is a sexually transmitted infection that causes genital herpes.
“Most HSV infections are asymptomatic, but symptoms of herpes include painful blisters or ulcers that can recur over time."
Thankful for Suzanna for speaking out about herpes, many people fled to the comments to relate to her situation.
One person praised: “Girl you’re amazing.”
Another user agreed: “Yes we need to normalise it… cause I shouldn't have been DEVASTATED in the Drs office when I found out. And I've only had 3 breakouts in my life.”
While a third person voiced: “Why do people try to denormalise HUMAN experiences…”
Someone else remarked: “People act like it's the plague. To be fair, I didn't realise how common it was until my diagnosis but I never stigmatised it.”
Meanwhile, a fifth person noted: “Love how they say don’t normalise it when it’s a normal thing.”
Suzanna contracted genital herpes in late 2019 from an ex-boyfriend who cheated on her. There is no cure for the disease with the only treatment being ointments or medication for when it flares up.
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