Aditya Mehta

Abstract

4.7  

Aditya Mehta

Abstract

Nightmares Make You Stronger

Nightmares Make You Stronger

2 mins
856


The living room of our house was covered by a cloud of silence: the calm before a storm. Our entire family sat as mannequins in front of the television: eerily still and emotionless. Our faces were blank and sullen. To an outsider, it would have seemed as though someone had just handed us our death certificates.


I felt a state of uncontrollable emotion as each of the news person’s calm utterances hurt me more grievously than the other like a perverse ambulance, damaging a healthy man in readiness for a hospital. The news was once again repeated: a positive case of the coronavirus had been reported in my building.

After much argument and deliberation, we made the difficult decision of getting ourselves tested for the virus at the hospital. To be honest, I am a believer that decisions are never really made — at best, they arise from a chaotic sea of peeves, whims, and hallucinations.


As it would turn out this decision was a foolhardy one. After an impossibly long wait which really tested our patience, the results finally came in: I was the only one in my family who had tested positive for Corona! 


Ignorance must truly be bliss: up to that moment, I was happy as a free bird. Nevertheless, I was coerced into isolation. Away from human contact, I was a soul shut inside a cage of bone, squeezed into a parcel of flesh.


I would spend two long weeks in a negative pressure isolation chamber, as though I were a prisoner in solitary confinement. The smell of fresh air and the sound of humanity have become nothing but memories!


I was crestfallen and dejected. The thought of meeting my family died in my head. I was beginning to reconcile the fact that I will never feel the touch of my loved ones again! Ultimately, we all owe death a life.


However, I remembered the words of a famous author - true joy is when we bake our pain and play with it.


I was revived and a newfound joy flowed through my body. I felt vertiginous, an unsustainable excitement. I began to enjoy all the small wonders of life which I had not fully experienced before. I relived the happier days of my life in isolations


Sooner than I knew, I was back home - surrounded by loved ones. 

I had woken up from a miserable nightmare.

These nightmares keep us up at night. However, there is a strange positivity in negativity. I had a new appreciation for life.


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