It has been one of the worst years of my life and yet one of the least lonely.

Last New Year’s Eve, I was at a very good friend’s apartment in Noe Valley, San Francisco. I had been casually dating a young techbro — there’s no other way to put it — in New York for some months, and he met me there, his family being from the Bay Area. Another friend I met through the internet the year before due to our shared Lyme disease diagnosis came over; she was in a slinky silver dress and egged me…