I wrote this post this morning but didn't quite get to pushing send. I read along with your posts often Nell, feeling with you the incredible pain and hopelessness of the times I have been in a similar position. It was suffocating and felt like it would never, ever end. Like there was no way through it. There have been times that I could see only one way to end to the darkness that consumed me. Sometimes it felt impossible to cope with hearing that one day I would be able to get there, because at the time those words felt impossible to hear.
The darkness still lingers around me, but it has changed despite the times I felt it never would. It visits me but it doesn't consume me like it has in the past. I don't want to talk about that unless you want to hear it because they are the same kinds of words that sometimes felt impossible to take in when the darkness was so threatening. That conversation can be there if you ever feel like it would work for you though.
I wanted to know how long it would take to feel better because I felt like if I could just know for sure how much longer I had to tolerate it all, I would be able to make it (I even called the HC and asked that very question, knowing there wouldn't be an answer). Still that question can pop up for me and still I wish there was an answer for it.
I do feel so much with you, the pain of feeling this way with little people. A while ago I wrote a reply to you that I didn't send at the time (I think as I was going to push send you looked like you'd had a better moment and then it didn't feel right at the time). It was about how much this one was (can still sometimes be) a source of incredible guilt, shame, pain etc. for me, all which I felt though I know there was no need to feel them. It is/was something that has no words for how intense it can be. I think it's why the nickname 'fish' or LF (little fish) stuck for me, because even writing/talking about the things I was alongside the word 'kids' was too hard for me to do. It helped me to know others felt it too and that I wasn't alone in feeling it.
No need to reply to this at all, I just wanted to add to the voices that are letting you know you're not alone in this journey @Former-Member.
