journey not recovery

Need is like a bottomless pit. Like hunger that is un-ending. I receive and feel something good for a moment, but then it highlights a lack of something essential. I start to feel starving. What I received doesn't feel like Enough. There is so much I didn't get and I can't catch up to it all. Then I am filled with fear and wanting. I need so much that no one could possibly give it without becoming drainers themselves because I need EVERYTHING. Going back to the beginning. I start to feel like it goes so deep that it's an emergency. I need something NOW to fill the void that opens up wider every time I am given something good. I can't get enough. No one can be near enough. There is a reaching and then fear. Fear of the hole in me and how it devours my core. It encompasses everything. Then I want to detach. Why eat at all if you're just going to become hungry again later? Override the hunger with starvation so that the hunger goes away. Live in the lack so that it

All of my life I have struggled with something as basic as object permenance that toddlers learn; that people and things continue to exist when out of sight. When I was in long term care it was at the point where I would be in the same room with someone and have to ask, crying, if they were still there. If my doctor, when behind the desk and out of sight, still existed. My nurse would tuck me in at night and leave, returning the morning, and it was as if I would never see her again. And when I was alone it felt as though I had stopped existing because there was no one there to reflect me back. This was crippling to me. I never learned to internalize the presence of others. I lived in fear, I could not be alone without feeling as if I and everyone I loved stopped being when I couldn't see them. This is absolute agony. My first experience of being mirrored back happened with my therapist Jason. He would look at me and I could see myself in his eyes. It was terrifying at first, almost