Charles Dickens' David Copperfield

Thus I began my new life, in a new name, and with everything new about me. Now that the state of doubt was over, I felt...like one in a dream…The remembrance of that life is fraught with so much pain to me, with so much mental suffering and want of hope, that I have never had the courage even to examine how long I was doomed to lead it. Whether it lasted for a year, or more, or less, I do not know. I only know that it was, and ceased to be…and there I leave it.