You think it'll be OK, and then remember all the stories of madness, suicide, ruin and despair that happened to real people, like yourself, and there's no reason not to imagine a terrible end of your own, no reason for it not to really happen.

And at the same time, over the same years, I become bitter, celebrating the losses of others as some great leveller, while still nurturing a fantasy that something will change for the better in my own life, that in the end it turns out well for us all.