I can appreciate healing and health so much because of what I have been through.

There is a specific pleasure available only on the far side of something: an entirely ordinary Saturday. Nothing scheduled, nobody to ring, the whole day just weather and washing.

People who have not been through it cannot taste that. It is not compensation for what happened and it does not make any ledger balance.

It is a capacity you have now and did not have before, and it will keep turning up in small places — hot water, a night without waking, a queue you find you do not mind standing in.