Thank you for coming here and sharing your story. I feel like you will continue to be here with us and share recovery as well.
I am near your age, and SO totally identify with so much of what you have shared.
You already know that the strength is within you, that is a wonderful start, you talk about finding it. I suggest that you accept that it is there and that it bubbles to the surface as you need it. Think of it this way, some of us spend thirty minutes rushing about the house tearing things apart looking for our glasses, only to realize they are on our face!
Here is another thought, scary I know, but I believe it to be true. In order for things to change, you have to be willing to let what we have go. Ugh.
I fought that, fought it hard. Wanted recovery AND keep as much of the rest of my life as I could. Now I am seeing that letting go of things had allowed me to recover, and inevitably new things do come along. Sometimes I ask myself what I would have done had I lost everything in a house fire...would I move forward, accept it and start again? Of course I would, I'd be sad, but I'd move forward. But somehow I think that I should be able to hang onto my old life and things etc.
I tell myself that I lost them through a "house fire" and even lost myself crawling about in the smoke...but I survived and can move on, and not spend the rest of my life trying to hand on to people and situations that really weren't working out anyway.
I lost my career, got another job, the plant closed, had to have major abdominal surgery, was told by my husband not to come home anymore...lost my things, pets, financial security, community (was 2000 miles away for a job) and in spite of that here I am, in recovery and moving forward.
Life is what it is going to be. We can work with it, or struggle against it. The less I struggle and accept things and take the next logical step, the better my days are.
It's a learning process, because old habits and thinking processes take awhile to change. And there are days I am paralyzed because I know my old way of dealing with things isn't the answer, but I haven't yet figured out a new one. So I sit on it until things get better.
You have a tangle on your hands right now, to be certain, and I can understand your feeling defeated, but taking one thing and one day at a time you can turn your life around.
Please stay here, and be willing to try a new way. You will never be sorry that you did.