Existence is very bleak at 3am when you’re curled on the bathroom floor, exhausted and panting from the latest bout of vomit that has just exited your body. And I don’t just mean because of the obvious pain and suffering you have just gone through, and that you know you will go through again and again and again before the night is over, but the existential crisis that is brought on by the cold and the silence and feeling of absolute meaninglessness that descends on you during any dark night of the soul, no matter what the cause.

With my face pressed hard against a dirty pink rug, staring at a wall splattered with vomit, the inarticulate whine that is involuntarily leaking out of my throat seems like nothing more than the pathetic pleading of some dumb animal begging for release. What would I give for this moment to be over? A month of my life? A year? A week of your life? As a child who was often sick with misery at the prospect of another crushing day, I would mentally go though everything I expected to happen in the next 24 hours, and somehow that would make the pain more manageable; I had already lived through the worst, it was only a matter of pushing through those surprises in-between. But as an adult you have the unfortunate tendency to see beyond your immediate desolation to the weeks and months and years beyond. No mental exercise can prepare you for that.

At 5am I started to worry that the house would catch fire, or the zombies would choose this moment to attack. What would I do? I was in no condition to run or fight. I could picture myself as a dark silhouette against the fiery sun of my imploding home, on my knees vomiting and craping my pants. I would be a cautionary tale, or more likely the punch line to a joke. And what do sick people do in real crises? How do cancer patients in Iraq escape when their hospital explodes? What happens to soldiers with missing limbs and pierced brain pans when the cry goes up to evacuate? What if this is my life, forever and ever, a monstrosity who can only expel, but never take comfort or warmth or nourishment?

I tend to be dramatic when I have the flu.