I innerstand, except for being the single mom part, which adds many different challenges. I suffered an ectopic pregnancy while with one of my abusers in my early 20s and never gave birth, while having the surgery damage my fallopian tubes beyond repair to ensure no future birth, although I later became a f/t stepmom to two, luckily within a healthy and stable relationship, for a change, which was it's own new challenge in many different ways, especially for someone from a past filled with so much abuse and neglect.
I felt all the feelings you describe for at least a couple decades, and they still rear their heads every once in a while, especially when I feel strong feelings of fear and uncertainty. I finally learned how to be the healthy love that I never received. I thought keeping myself alive was self-love enough, but I had no clue how incredibly healing true unconditional self-love could be, as I'd always been taught to love and put others before myself, especially those beings no one has ever actually seen, but have only read about. Feeling like I could never live up to those high standards and feeling like that's why I suffered so greatly felt so incredibly degrading, most especially while trying to ask for help.
No matter how many helpful spaces I visited, no matter how many meds were prescribed, no matter how many therapists I visited, none of them helped me tap into that self-love I so badly needed, rather they worked quite hard, it seemed, at stripping my true self away even more. It took years and a whole village of non-conventional healers to help me arrive in what feels like my healthiest healing space. I found them via a local time bank that encouraged and fostered bartering for goods/services/products, or I never would have had an opportunity to try them. Things like learning deep breathing techniques, alternate nostril breathing, nutritional healing, energy healing, sound healing, purposeful movement, etc., etc.
I'll soon be 50 years old and I still sleep with a fan on and use a salt lamp for a night light. I likely always will. I used to be able to sleep like a rock through train sounds, with multiple roommates making lots of noise, and all different hours/shifts without hearing a damn thing, and had to wear a mask to darken the room, but shift clearly happened, so I must also shift to make myself comfortable, as my overall health depends on it. Now if I don't have my fan noise on while trying to sleep, I hear the least little thing and it keeps me awake.
Things I used to view as inconveniences to self and others are now simply a necessary requirement for me to maintain the quality of life I wish (and need) to more healthily exist in. I've found it's a rough road that never ends, and society has been designed to not make it an easy trip, at all, but once in a while you'll hit a stretch of road that has no pot holes and isn't under construction. I find building up as much inner strength and love as I can to ground myself during those smoother times to better support myself during the deep down in the ditch days to be the most helpful method ensuring any consistency, and even then, it remains a crap shoot. You're moving in a beneficial direction already. Unfortunately, most of the people you encounter outside of the shelter arena will never understand, as they've never lived it, nor do they wish to let their minds even go there. Wishing you much support, strength, and clarity. It's a scary space to try to function from, for sure. Gentle hugs, if you accept.
