Alone with your thoughts, your worst day will try to introduce itself as your whole story. It isn’t.

Bad memories do not arrive labelled as one day. Alone and quiet, the worst thing that has happened to you presents itself as a summary, as though everything since were a footnote, which is a trick of memory rather than a fact. Hard days are loud and ordinary days are quiet, so the loud ones get to do the talking.

When it starts, say the date out loud, which puts it back in a long sequence. Then name two things that have happened since that it could not have predicted. If it keeps taking over your evenings, that is worth telling somebody, because nobody should host that alone.