Just a quick warning
for those of you who haven’t seen the show yet,
this piece does contain spoilers.
We have said too many goodbyes.
When Brian and the whole cast
sat down to read the first episode,
we realized there was a funeral.
One of us was going to die.
No one seemed to know who it was,
but everyone wanted to know.
Maybe like a month and a half passed,
where I get a text from Brian,
“Hey, do you want to go for dinner?”
And then, he’s like...
“Do you know why I asked you to dinner?”
And I’m pretty sure I started crying.
And then the dinner got very serious.
And a lot of tears.
You know, Justin was...
Justin was.
His story is so much so of how
so many young people’s lives could end up.
His self-destructive behavior, reliance on substance,
the lack of tools to deal with not only his addiction,
but what’s underneath all that.
Yeah!
We never see Justin at rehab, but in the fourth season,
he comes back from rehab and we see that.
We see a guy who...
Aw, man.
We see a guy who’s found an easier, softer way,
until he’s not,
until he’s the same scared boy we’ve come to know and love.
For all of Justin’s progress,
for all of the good news that came into his life
after so much bad news and so many struggles,
he still wasn’t able to consider himself
worth loving and worth helping.
I’m not gonna get better, so...
better to be with him than to...
sit around and wait for me to OD.
You know, so much of Justin was...
struggle.
In season four, we see he’s got some flu-like symptoms.
There are KS lesions that appear.
We’ll learn much later
that he has been involved in sex work,
including unprotected sex with men
in order to buy drugs, buy food,
and take care of himself.
Ultimately, some measures of unprotected sex,
sharing needles, has led him to contract HIV.
But he doesn’t get himself tested.
Justin didn’t know he was sick at that point.
He knew something was up.
And we’re watching this really scared guy
go to prom and he’s seeing what his life can be,
which is full of people who love him.
And that is why it is just so damn sad
when you watch him fall.
I think the hardest part for Justin in that
is, one, his body is just shutting down,
and through a disease that has this
ethos of shame behind it.
HIV stigma
can lead to a fear to get tested in the first place,
which, tragically, is what happened with Justin.
By the time Justin was diagnosed,
it was too late.
Justin has tested positive for HIV-1.
And based on his symptoms, we believe
it has progressed to AIDS.
HIV isn’t a death sentence anymore,
and it needn’t have been for Justin.
It’s now a disease that is mostly manageable
and can be treated if it’s caught in time.
And it takes reaching out,
it takes getting tested, it takes getting help.
There have been major advances made to access care
to get treatment when you need it
and to seek out a diagnosis
when you start seeing warning signs or symptoms.
Dude, will you hold my hand?
Will you hold my hand?
As the guy who played him,
who, for like eight months out of the year,
stepped into his...
worn-out and tired shoes,
emotionally, yeah, you know,
it’s...
It’s a heartbreaker.
It’s a series wrap on Brandon Flynn.
I want people to believe that Justin’s story
is not necessarily always the outcome,
that there’s duality to life.
There’s addiction and there’s recovery,
there’s lost and there is found,
there is light in the darkness.
I love you more than life.
Don’t love anything more than life.
We need to stop stigmatizing one another.
We have to stop stereotyping one another.
We have to embrace each other
and say, “You know what?
this thing that you’re going through,
I’m going to be there for you.”
For those of you out there
who have stuck with us through thick and thin,
thanks for understanding us.
Thanks for understanding these characters
and what they’ve gone through
and what they will go through.
Thank you for the love.