This book began in anger. That matters, because anger is routinely dismissed as a moral failure when it is, very often, a form of recognition. It arises when something has been tolerated for too long, explained away too often, or reframed so repeatedly that the harm it causes is no longer acknowledged, if it ever was. The anger that underpins this work is not oriented toward blame, but toward clarity: a way of seeing what polite language, forced optimism, and personal responsibility narratives are designed to obscure. In this sense, the book treats anger not as excess, but as a necessary moral signal. Yet, whilst I was spurred on by this intense compulsion, I was also held back by an energy whose potency was equal to it, if not greater: fear. What could fear do at this stage, when I had already lost my life as I knew it and no forward path had even faintly been illuminated ahead of me? What was there to fear? I was almost paralysed by the possibility that this experience could come out too awkwardly, too worryingly, even too painfully or pitifully for some, particularly when observed from within a culture that relentlessly praises positivity, to the point of toxicity, and the fantasy that mindset alone can absorb material deprivation, as if the overwrought mind could self-regulate by amplifying yet more frantic thoughts or by burning incense. There isn’t a scenario in which your basic living needs, and those of your dependents, are not met and the mind can migrate to benevolent, serene enlightenment.