Two years ago, I was fighting for my life against COVID-19 at the emergency ward of a local hospital in Delhi.

If you had asked me at any point, upon testing positive, during India's brutal second wave of infections that I'd anticipated my life's rhythm coming to a halt with the big, bad pandemic, I'd have likely scoffed at your face.

Like most other serial idgaf urban Indians in the country, I'd assumed that if COVID were to touch upon my life (and me), it wouldn't be too bad. After all, I was in my late 20s, and my annual medical reports were largely fine (except for lack of Vitamin D, iykyk), I put in 3-4 days of workout, and I was eating mostly clean and staying indoors, and masking up for any outdoor activity. I did not have to step out for a job and we were all maintaining adequate precautions at home.
Then, how the fuck did I find myself struggling to breathe in the make-shift hospital bed in a pediatric ward, dying for life-saving drugs, and begging my parents to find me a place where I could poop my guts out in peace (we had a common toilet for 12 patients in that room and they wouldn't flush). I would struggle to breathe inside the washroom without oxygen support and the supply was next to my bed, which I couldn't take along with me to the washroom.

By the seventh day in the hospital, I had lost all hope for a recovery. There was not much being said or heard since I had left my phone at home, switched off. There was limited contact between us in that fortnight when every hour felt like a punishment in hell. I was truly begging for life to either suck my soul dry or air itself in; however, not once did I think I'd make out of it alive. In that fortnight, I'd seen patients being hurled in and out of beds overnight, preceded by their muffled cries of struggling for oxygen. When I say I've seen hell, I mean it.

What does life look like after returning from hell? How does it feel to get a second shot at life?

I wish I could show you from my eyes what it means to get a renewed shot at life. I know, not many get that experience. I count my blessings but believe me, life after experiencing hell can never be the same. Your pre-death experience self and post-lived hell experience self don't see eye to eye with each other. They are constantly at odds with life and the situations you are thrown in.

However, it did not end there for me.

For a whole year, I struggled with long-COVID and PTSD of finding myself helpless for not being able to protect myself. While there are millions of parallel narratives of people and their journeys where they couldn't help save lives or they did help save lives, mine was centered grossly on my experience. It doesn't mean I don't understand or empathize with the experience of 'others' but just says that you end up looking out for yourself before you look out to help others.

Last year in May-June, I tested positive for COVID again, and testing positive was the last nail in the coffin for my health and well-being. Even though that experience was not half as bad as the first one, I was completely devastated.

In two rounds of COVID in two years, I find myself a wholly different person, with shifted perspective and everything. I have a day job that I step into; I travel a fair bit weekly for work and occasionally for leisure. I find myself cozying up to strangers in conversations laden on water and nothing more, and immersing myself in their life; maybe I am living today so I could experience that idea of having fun in a different way. Six months ago, I gave up alcohol to test my boundaries and sobriety is another glittering experience in this new life I have been granted.

Two years ago, I'd be that person at a party who'd be drinking quietly and sitting in a corner on her phone, probably on a dating app or flirting with some stranger online with no hopes of meeting them irl. Today, I'll befriend a stranger at a house party, tell them all about the last guy I dated and how he was a scum, and find myself dancing with that person at my birthday party four months later, wondering how the hell did we land up here?

I have signed up for things I would never do; rekindled patterns of emotional eating to cope with the stress of whether or not I'll live four months from now; found myself actively pushing my boundaries in professional set-ups and personal relationships. The things I once looked down upon, including a corporate desk job and positively being cherished by someone, are all the things that I am either involved in or actively working towards attaining.

A slow waltz with death over a fortnight can turn your life to 360. It can make you wonder if you are the same person who took pride in saying "I'm dead inside" to every colleague you worked with, to now guffawing at people who are "dead inside" around you. I see lazy co-workers, friends who are in the depths of depressive hell and those who don't realise a healthy body can be so fucking empowering and I wonder if they'd ever understand the privilege they have is beyond their usual miseries? They probably won't and it's okay.

I have opened up to meeting new people and signing up for experiences and doing things that I wouldn't otherwise do even on my deathbed. Because why not, I have been on my deathbed without doing those things. Maybe this time around, life on the deathbed will look different with different experiences. The old me died fighting COVID-19 two years ago. RIP her but the new me is here to fuck shit around and create chaos for as long as she lives.