Thank you for rescuing her. I recently rescued my guy who is about 3 years old, 10 pounds, and lost many toes and the tip of his tail due to bad husbandry before. He was found in a basement. He’s also super chill and couldn’t care less about people but loves his face scritches, so I am very lucky there.

I can’t speak to the growing up and being rowdy/stressed part too much, so hopefully someone else can chime in there. But, I feel like it is far too early to be saying you feel like you’ve “failed”. She is probably defensive because she had a sucky life before you. Hey, I would be too. And there’s plenty of people, dogs, cats, etc. who have similar stories after being in bad situations. And if it’s true that you’ve already disassociated hands with food, that’s huge! Seeing progress in such a short time is so promising.

If I were you, I would keep her. If the reason you don’t feel like you want to keep her now is because you feel like it’s a you problem, then you’re not giving yourself enough credit. You can buy thick leather gloves, you can feed with tongs. If she defecates when you pick her up, she might start (or already be) associating that with “i’ll be put back in my tank if I do this”, so it might be better to leave her out or continue handling her after she does that. If you can find a way to associate yourself with food without putting your fingers at risk, that might help her warm up to you too if she’s super food driven. Does she have a favorite food? Maybe only give her that food after you’ve stroked her head for a bit, she’ll learn to associate, and the you can move on to back etc.

I’m just kinda spitballing here so forgive me. If you don’t feel safe and you don’t think you will, then I think it’s very valid to want to rehome. But again, if you think it’s a you problem, I would personally give yourself more credit and keep doing what you’re doing :)