Hello all, it's been a few years since I posted here, but there's something I haven't done till now - thanked you all properly. So thank you lovely Mumsnet so much for your concern, your generous sharing of painful personal experiences, your overwhelming support. When I posted, I was at a complete loss, this was the only place I felt I could be totally honest, not the strong person that everyone around me needed me to be at the time.
So if you're reading this and you're not sure if you should post, please, just do it. The people here really do care, they're kind and they have such great advice (I got more here in 10 minutes than I did from any amount of googling).