What doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.

The strength in question is rarely muscular. It's tolerance, widening.

Something that would have wrecked an entire week five years ago now costs you an afternoon and a long walk. Same event, different capacity. You didn't become tougher exactly — your sense of what counts as a catastrophe got quietly recalibrated by things that genuinely were. And none of it arrives during. Nobody feels stronger while it's happening. That part turns up later, unannounced, the next time something similar comes round and you notice you're still upright.