Ask HN: How did your failed startup affect you and how did you bounce back?

I've come to realise that one of the things that's personally stopped me in the past from starting a company or going independent is this idea I had of what failure looks like. I've realised that one of my biggest fear of failure scenarios plays out like this: I start some business, it fails and I end up destitute, sleeping on the streets, to never get a job or ever recover again. I realised how much of a nebulous vision that is. It also occurred to me that this is actually really illogical; I mean, it's not like I'm swimming in savings now and I get by. If I started a venture and it failed, couldn't I just go back into the workforce? What this really made me consider is that I actually don't know what failure looks like at all. So, to the HN crowd out there that's been down this road for real, what actually happened when you failed at a startup or at say, transitioning into contracting? How did you bounce back?