Dear Life, Try Me!

Sarthak Nigam, Raipur

Hari Om.

I am Sarthak, a teenager and a student. And I’ll be sharing my 20 days’ experience with COVID and how it changed me and taught me many lessons in certain ways.

Recently I and a few of my family members were tested positive for COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2). Which included me, my mother and my maternal grandparents.

As universities and colleges were shut down during the pandemic, I decided to move to my village at the onset of the second wave to be safer than living in the city, but fate had a different plan for me. It started with me waking up with extreme weakness and high fever whereas none of my family members showed any sign of health issues. To be on the safer side, I isolated myself from the rest of them and everyone decided to get tested. First we took RT-PCR test which eventually would take 48 hours for results, but my mother also started to show signs and we both decided to take rapid tests which would give us results within minutes. We all came positive, and my journey and experience starts.

Experiences

First experience: every dark cloud has a silver lining. When we were tested positive and my condition was getting worse over days, we wanted to move to the city for better treatment and isolation from our elderly family members. But, some of our really close relatives denied us by making invalid excuses. This made us feel dismal, betrayed and helpless, but we learned something that day, help might come from the most unexpected sources. And that day my aunt and uncle decided to take us in and take care of us. I was speechless seeing this help from someone whom I never expected. But for 20 days they took care of us in every way possible and helped us recover even being in a small town with less services.

It was really tough during certain days both mentally and physically where I just wanted to defenestrate my mind and go to a deep sleep, maybe forever. But, people who truly loved me never gave up on me whereas I have been fighting my whole life and this was easier than the path I have walked the rest of my life.

Second experience: getting closer to forgotten practices. Like most modern teenagers I was surrounded with technologies, and in a life of hustle and bustle and modernization I was forgetting my roots and who I really was. But when I was having so much time on my hands I started a few practices which I had forgotten due to certain circumstances. I loved writing stories, so I spent more time imagining and writing down new and fascinating stories. I loved reading books hence I spent more time reading books. I also loved yoga, hence I started doing more yoga which really helped me recover faster. All of these were not possible to do when I lived a life of hustle, technology and spent a lot of time in front of screens.

After 20 days me and my close ones were tested negative, but I was someone who was closer to life and himself than ever before. My experiences taught me many lessons. Lessons of self-discovery, trust and how to find hope in any situation.

As a suggestion to anyone reading this, just remember whatever happens in life happens for a reason. And it’s up to you to see those reasons and learn from them with gratitude or to be heartbroken and live a life in melancholy. When life gets tougher never say, “Why me?” but always have a smile and say, “Dear life, try me.”