That One Time I Actually Could Have Died Because Of My Opinions | Jazzed About Stuff

“I’m sorry your January has been rough, Jasmine.”

I read the email and had to pause. For one, because I legitimately thought that we were in the middle of February, and two because I really had just experienced a wild ride of a month.

I began 2020, speeding through the snowcapped Grapevine mountains from the Central Valley to Los Angeles. I brought in the New Year with my sister in shorts outside at midnight watching illegal fireworks shoot from backyards. Local residents twirled sparklers over dampened lawns in 40-degree weather, and I smiled as we took turns watching our exhaled breaths become visible against the pitch-black night sky. By January 4th, I had already hiked so many miles in the cold and been to so many holiday and birthday parties that I was for sure I needed to put down my Christmas tree because it had to have been March by now. However, I’m glad I took my Christmas stuff down the next day because, after that next week of traveling to Texas, I would actually almost die because of a case of the flu.

It did not even take a full day of flying that first Tuesday of the month before I started to feel the symptoms of what I thought was a cold, hitting hard. I bought an expensive pack of tissues with acid-trip-looking cartoons on them and a…