How Long COVID Reactivated My Short Life

When your body signals you to return to being yourself again

Photo by Razvan Chisu on Unsplash

“This is it, I’m going to die,” I thought.

I was 40 years old and lived alone thousands of miles away from any of my family members. It occurred to me that if I did die, no one would know for days.

I had close friends who lived nearby but I kept them at a distance.

I was lying in bed alone in my studio apartment. I was too weak to get out of bed. I had just finished work for the day, and I felt so weak that I only had the strength to limp over to my bed. I had a fever, the chills, and every part of my body was in some kind of pain or irritable soreness.

I had never felt so cold in my life.

I was wrapped up in every possible layer of clothing I could wear. I had every blanket I owned covering me, but I was still freezing. Fortunately, I worked from home and lived in a small studio apartment, so finding my bed was the easy part.

At first, I accepted my possible impending death. I felt like I had done my best with the life I had up to that point. I did more in my career than I had originally expected. I tried my best in my romantic relationships, even though they all failed. I was always honest with my friends even though I had lost a lot of them over the years. I wasn’t suicidal, but I was tired of my life. I was willing to accept that fate.

Turning 40 had felt like a form of death. When I was 20, it felt like I had another 100 years before I turned 40. When I was 30, I told myself I had another 30 years before I reached 40. But, now that I was actually 40, I had crossed a threshold where my life had officially become “nothing like I imagined it would be.”

“If this is my time, this is my time,” I thought. “Nothing wrong with that.”

I passed out.

Whenever I woke up, I cocooned myself a little bit more among my blankets and pillows like a wild animal trying to figure out how to keep warm for the first time.

It was winter in Seattle, so it was almost always kind of dark.

I lost track of time.

Each time I fell asleep, I felt like I might not wake up. Each time I woke up, it occurred to me that I was completely alone.

I thought I loved being alone.

At one point when I woke up, it felt like my body was on fire. It had never felt that hot in my life. My insides were burning and my skin felt like it was in flames. I unraveled myself from the top layers of covers in a dizzying spin as though my life depended on it. As I poked and pried through the lower layers, I felt like a chick bursting out of a hard eggshell.

As I lay there gradually cooling in a sweat, I felt the disappointment and the relief that I was going to live. A part of me felt like I died and a part of me had never felt more alive.

After my experience with COVID, I never breathed the same again. My smell and taste never fully returned. I developed an intolerance to eggs, and digesting other foods like wheat, granola, tomatoes, and peanut butter became more difficult. They were all foods I loved and still love.

It was like I had the same mind, but now I inhabited a different body.

By the time I returned to work, I felt like a different person mentally.

I couldn’t help but see the world differently. I also felt this glow within me that hadn’t been there since I was in college. When it felt like my entire body was on fire, it was like it had relit an inner fire.

“If not now, then when?” I thought as I looked at a blank email to my supervisor. It took me a day to write it, but it would eventually become my resignation email.

What I call the “Returned Light” is the renewed appreciation for life that emerges after surviving an experience in which death felt genuinely possible. When I had COVID, I had that one night when I thought I might die alone, and even though my body felt like it had been covered in a permanent layer of fatigue afterward, it seemed to have reactivated this youthful glow within me that had been dormant for nearly 20 years.

When you’re a kid, you think anything in life is possible, and I suddenly felt that way again. I wanted to write again, I wanted to see the world, I wanted to reconnect with my family, and I wanted to know who I was instead of always pretending to be a version of myself that was more likable to everybody else.

Experiencing Returned Light doesn’t just restore a sense of dormant hope and gratitude; it acts as a spotlight on the tiny details of life that were easy to see as a kid, but that otherwise take a concerted effort to rediscover and appreciate as an adult.

“Life isn’t fair,” they say, and it often isn’t. You have to lose something you want in order to gain something you need.

Before I got Long COVID, I had everything I wanted: a six-figure income, a diverse portfolio of savings and investments, a beautiful apartment in my favorite city, close friends who lived nearby, and meaningful work helping others.

But I had never felt more alone, and I no longer enjoyed being alone as much.

They don’t tell you that when you devote yourself to helping others, you can lose yourself in the process.

They don’t tell you that when you make life decisions to earn the respect of others, you can gradually lose respect for yourself.

Since I’ve had Long COVID, I’ve obtained everything I’ve needed: a healthier lifestyle, peace of mind, a closer relationship with the friends and family I love, a clearer understanding of the personal relationships that were unhealthy for me, and the pursuit of my dreams to travel and be a writer.

“If this is my time, this is my time,” I thought that night. “Nothing wrong with that. But if I do make it out of this, life will be different.”

Life has been different — for better and for worse. But when you’ve returned to your inner light, it’s mostly better.

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This space is a quiet café — words meant to be read slowly.

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This article was originally published on LinkedIn.