I think I now understand the name for what has been troubling me for years.

So in 2008, I basically lost everything. A year before I had finally - I thought - put my life together. I was 20 years old and I had been through several nervous breakdowns, struggled with anorexia, bulimia, agoraphobia, depression. anxiety and social phobia (at different times, thankfully!) since I was 13. I had been crazy when I was a teenager, feeling a desperate need for escape from my surroundings, I had run away from home a few times and ended up in an abusive relationship. Since I was a kid I had promised myself I would make something of myself and I would work at it etc. When I was 20, my mood was higher, I was about to graduate with the highest results in my year at uni, I had won a scholarship for postgraduate study in the career I wanted to enter, I had a wonderful boyfriend I loved very much, I had great friends, I was still fighting to eat properly but I was managing it, it was getting better, and my anxiety was getting better too...it felt like I'd really done it, somehow. I'd pulled myself out of the hole and my life was going to be ok.

Then it all changed, seemingly over night. Looking back at my diaries I think it was when I realised everything that I had, and panicked that I could lose it all. I started to have panic attacks a lot, felt less secure in my relationship all of a sudden, and started to suffer from an overwhelming and debilitating fatigue. I put the tiredness down to all the work I'd put in and thought it would be temporary, but it just got worse and worse and worse. I ended up dropping out of my postgrad course because I couldn't keep up. I couldn't keep up with the housework either and I was so zoned out I found it difficult to keep up with conversations and became very self absorbed, constantly just trying to figure out my problems. My friends lost patience with me and started to see me less and less. My boyfriend was losing patience with me too and my family were basically just furious at me all of the time. Before I was 22 I had lost my career, my boyfriend, the support of family and friends, my job and my home. I also by this time could barely physically move. I couldn't make it to the shops without sitting down several times and I just couldn't cope with anything. The loss hit me really, really hard and I felt hopeless. I tried to work really hard to get my career back on track but it was like banging my head against a brick wall. What was also frustrating was that I absolutely could not cope with the break up. I was inconsolable for about 18 months and everyone was angry at me about it - which, fair does, you can only really support someone so much. Sometimes I think people thought I was being melodramatic or looking for attention, perhaps. It must have seemed really extreme. I went on to miss that ex for six years. Not constantly: periodically, but sometimes it felt like the grief had just started up again. The weird thing was, though, that I had very little memory of him. I remembered a couple of things, a few moments, but all in all it was a blur. Although I no longer miss that boyfriend, I still feel 'stuck'. 2007 was the last time I had hope. It's sort of worse that I feel such shame over the inability I had to properly integrate the grief. I feel like I must be some kind of freak. Who misses an ex for six years? Only weirdoes and stalkers, right?

I still don't feel like I'm living in the moment and I massively overreacted to a very minor incident last year, experiencing very, very acute grief. It was almost like grief was always there, just under the surface, and one minor abandonment was all that was needed for me to feel the full force of the pain I felt in 2008. Like I say, I don't miss that ex anymore, but I still feel like I'm vulnerable and I'm worried that complex loss (i.e. it wasn't just 'the boyfriend', it was all of the things I lost at once) has ****ed me up for life.

Has anyone had and fully recovered from complicated grief?