Arguably, you don't. The big difference is whether your compiler enforces and tracks your documentation, assumptions used by your code, often critically important for correctness. Unfortunately, Rust is far from being perfect in this regard (e.g. SPARK probably does a better job here), but it significantly improves on C/C++ in this regard.
>I Work Alone
Unfortunately, even if you are the only soul touching the code, it often quickly becomes false. On a big enough project, "alone" inevitably becomes "me and that guy who wrote this part of the code". This also can be formulated as "me and 2-years-ago-me". In other words, we quickly forget a lot of context used for writing a piece of code.
>Rust is too big for my small brain, unfortunately.
I think the lack of hubris, the understanding that small human brains are not enough to keep track of all necessary context required for writing correct software is the key element for liking Rust and similar languages. Rust is not about building ivory towers of abstractions for the sake of it (though some people try to walk in this direction), but about offloading as much as possible of the context on compiler. Unlike humans, the compiler does not get tired, it does not forget. Yes, it's limited and because of those limitations it requires to restructure our code and sprinkle it with additional information, but more often than note it's a good thing.
As sel4 and other formally verified software demonstrates, it absolutely can be done in C. But one could say that C used in sel4 is not a C language anymore. After all, you can not take a random C library and use it in sel4.