My family and friends call me a survivor.

My family and friends call me a survivor. I was born at 7 months and the doctor told my parents he couldn’t guarantee if I would survive. It would be two and half days before they would know. “ If I make it it’ll be a miracle.” I did survive! It turns out that god had a plan for me and it was quite miraculous that I did live.
When I was 12, right before a big holiday in September, I felt terrible pain. I told my mom “I’ve been dying because of my shoulder pain since yesterday…” My mother took me to the hospital, the check up was normal until the doctor ran to the main lobby of senior doctors and discussed something for what seemed to be forever. Then they came and explained to us that there was water all over my lungs and my heart had been moved to the right because of the pressure of water and my hugely expanded lungs. It’s the last stage. They rushed to see if my heart was infected by the water, if yes there was no hope for me to make it alive. I didn’t realize how serious the situation was until I looked at my mother bursting into tears.

Days passed by and doctors took out 2 and half liters of thick yellowish water from my lungs. They did this by sticking a syringe right into my lungs and withdrawing the water. I later learned the level of danger for removing more than 1 liters, even 500ml is considered extremely dangerous. After 6 months of medication and continuous check up I made it! Beat death again! I wasn’t able to think of any seriousness about the condition that I had, after all, I was 12 years old, but I can still feel the needle that they injected into my lungs.

Growing up thinking about that incident still horrifies me. I want to call myself someone who survived death twice! But I see another way I have survived and it is not physical death but a kind of social death or oppression… My first country was a society that I’ve been able to escape from. I belong to such a society where women don’t have any rights or freedom. They can’t go out alone. Growing up I always had a bodyguard everywhere I went outside. I remember trying to hide from my bodyguard on my way home from school at the age of 14. I wanted to go with my friends to talk throughout the whole way home and have fun like boys school students used to do, which never happens because of our society where girls can’t talk/ laugh loud or walk alone without an adult or a man. My biggest dream or I can say my whole family’s dream will come true if I can go to college and get my degrees. It will be a biggest achievement for me and also it’ll be something to be very proud about for my family too since none of our family have been able to finish their education and get a degree.
I want to be the example for our society back in Bangladesh.