Bad things do not define my life.

Inclusion and definition are not the same relationship. Something can be entirely present in a life and still not be what the life is about, and holding both of those at once is hard when the bad thing is recent.

Notice how a decade gets told to a stranger on a train. Ten years compress into roughly four sentences, and the worst year is one clause somewhere in the middle. Not because it was minor — it wasn't — but because a life turns out to be too large to be summarised by its hardest part.

The definition tends to get written from inside the worst month, which is the least reliable vantage point there is.

The verdict can wait until you're standing somewhere else.