A few years ago, I got the flu, and it was the worst I have ever felt in my entire life. Horrible, really. I was simultaneously sweating and shivering. Exhausted but too sore to lie still. Isolated in a space where time stretched endlessly but also stood still. 

So when I saw people posting at the end of this year that they’d been taken out by the flu, I whispered quiet gratitudes to whatever immune-system god had spared me this time around. Yes, I’m knocking on wood as I type this.

And because I am not a normal person, this gratitude spiral landed me in a Kleenex-induced existential rabbit hole.