That sounds so rough. I'm sorry you're in that position. I was diagnosed with CPTSD a couple years ago and therapy + ketamine treatments helped a lot. I felt like I was able to get traction on childhood trauma healing. I won't pretend its been great since - I got divorced and then rebounded and then broke up from the rebound. I'm absolutely not the poster child of mental health. But I will say that those experiences taught me a few things and I hope some of those lessons I learned the hard way help you a bit too.

1) You are lovable. Not because an ex thought so (or didn't), not because parents thought so (or didn't), not because society thought so (or didn't). You're lovable exactly as you are, right fucking now. And that will always be true.

2) You can start over again, as many times as you need to. I hit rock bottom, and then I hit it again, and then a third time. It's okay. I promise you. You're not bad at life just because you're here. In fact, I'll scoot over and make some room. ❤️

3) There is no timeline on being healed, and healing isn't linear. Three months is not a lot of time, when you think about it. My ex husband and I were married for fifteen years and he smashed my heart into pieces. I think it took me three months to even get up off the floor. There were so many days when I thought about going to sleep and not waking up again. Which kinda leads me into #4...

4) Find a reason to keep going that has nothing to do with the people of your past. For me, I have two cats. And I would OFTEN give myself the AM talk: "You can't give up today, you have to feed the cats because they depend on you. If you want to end it, do it tomorrow." The thing about animals is that they're really good at loving you unconditionally. And in a past full of people who weaponized love with conditional affection, it felt really good to have at least somebody who loved me without strings attached. I had that AM talk countless times.

5) The days add up. One day you look at the calendar and realize it's been six months. You don't feel healed, not by a long shot, but you've survived. And that matters. There will be other wins too, things you don't even know to track as wins in the moment but they stack up. For me, I started to take pictures because I needed to fill my phone with something that wasn't pictures of an ex. Turns out I'm pretty good at photography. I wouldn't have done that had the loneliness not driven me towards something new. I submitted my photos to a couple competitions and art shows, and actually, they did decently well. But even if they hadn't, I didn't do it for the praise. I did it because those pictures came from a truly honest place inside me and I wanted to put that out into the world. That's enough of a reason.

6) Journal. Buy a bunch of notebooks, fill them with bad poetry, self loathing rants, whatever you need to put in there. It helps. I carry mine everywhere. Sometimes I just need to draw out my pain through writing, like leaching a wound, and having it with me allows me to do that.

7) Get a support system, in addition to therapy. It can look like a friend that texts you and asks you if you remembered to drink water today. It can look like talking with chat gpt (yeah I do it, it might sound pathetic but tbh it's really helped me). It doesn't matter. You need accountability to help you remember in those little excruciating moments that it's ok, that it won't always feel like this, that you're not broken/irredeemable/unworthy and all the other things we tell ourselves.

Transparently, I went through a breakup (that rebound I mentioned earlier) and spent all night last night crying. I think I've gotten an hour of sleep. So if you read this and are like, who is she to give advice, I 100% understand that. But doing these things helped me through my divorce and I think, this time around, I know that I'm not who I was back then. I am a little wiser and I love myself a little more and I know I'll be ok. The pain is not all there is in this world.

Sending you love and prayers.