For Ryan Wooten, Being Positive is Not Just About His HIV-Status | Living Y Ready

For Los Angeles native Ryan Wooten, being HIV-positive has instilled in him an even more positive outlook on life. Featured in the first episode of Living y Ready this year, Wooten’s story illustrates how your mentality may be your greatest weapon while confronting and overcoming obstacles that stand in your way of happiness. 

His story begins in South Central. His father, a military man, was mostly absent, so Wooten was raised by his single mom. From the beginning, he struggled with his sense of identity. Being Black and Mexican meant not quite fitting into Black circles and not quite fitting into Latino circles. In either case, his natural dose of femininity didn’t help.

Feeling othered planted seeds for escape.

“I left home when I was eighteen years old,” he says on the show, “and I started to explore my sexuality. There were a lot of mistakes I made. There were a lot of circumstances and situations I put myself in. There were a lot of drugs I knew I shouldn’t have done. It’s truly, the way I think about it, a coming-of-age story. I felt like I had to go through that and all of those experiences [to become] the man I am today.”

When he started having symptoms of an STI, his last thought was HIV. But at the LGBT center, where he went to get answers, they recommended a test for everything. Why not, right?

Illustration by Tevy Khou

A few weeks later, when Wooten got the call to come back to the clinic, he was furious. He sat across from the clinician throwing condoms at the wall. He was HIV-positive and it was his worst nightmare. At that moment, it was the most terrible news of his life.

With the most seriousness, Wooten told the clinician:

“I want vanilla ice cream. Take me to get ice cream. That’s the only thing that’s going to make me happy right now.”

So, off they went, down Hollywood Boulevard, and Wooten got his vanilla ice cream. And he cried.

Then that crying turned to laughing. 

“I realized that I was still alive,” he says. “That was the first moment that I knew it wasn’t a death sentence. It was just a diagnosis.”

Wooten’s positivity didn’t sprout within him overnight. It took time spent undoing his own insecurities and getting the proper help. There were times he felt like a statistic, other times he didn’t want to be alive. On the worst days, he would take the bus back to the LGBT center just to talk to others who understood the complex feelings unique to queer identity.

One day, at the center, a timid guy joined them, and he came out as gay for the first time. Wooten, with hopes to bring him temporary peace, suggested they go get ice cream.

Still of Ryan Wooten by Pedro Gonzalez Kuhn

In this way, Wooten’s HIV status gave him the confidence and the experience to step up for his community, to help others find joy against even the hardest of circumstances.

Looking to the future, Wooten hopes to have a family, to continue living a healthy life grounded in self-love. Click here to watch this episode of Living y Ready for the whole story.