I am so sorry to hear that you've had such a difficult time. It certainly sounds as though the meningitis may have developed your brain development which could have lead to some of your sensory difficulties. And to this outsider's perspective it sounds as though perhaps you walled off your emotions regarding your mother and never let yourself properly grieve for her.

I can't say I can relate to you in every sense, I did not have some of the severe troubles you did and fortunately my parents are still with me. But in the sense of "feeling like a fraud" I cannot BEGIN to tell you how much I identify with that. I excelled in school but was such a shy kid, and as time went on I had a lot of insecurity about myself socially, clung to the few deep relationships that I had.

I am a physician assistant and even though I did well during my medical training I always thought to myself "they're going to find out soon. I'm not as smart/intuitive/organized/etc as they are. Soon they're going to realize I'm kidding myself, I can't do medicine"

Or some similar thing. I felt like a kid walking around in an adult's body. Not every day, not all the time, but it really affected my confidence for a long time.

Medicine has helped my anxiety symptoms. It did not help these insecurities. What did help to some degree were high dose fish oil, but most especially therapy. Fish oils have been proven to be beneficial to brain health so this may be something for you to strongly consider.

Obviously we have different issues, but I think you owe it to yourself to consider therapy. I wish you the very best.