It's been almost a week since my cat, Monty, disappeared. He's never skipped one meal let alone 35... I'm finding it so hard to cope. I can literally feel pain in my heart. It's like it's slowly rotting away, or like a huge chunk of my heart is being crushed and broken into millions of tiny fragments.

Monty was more than just a cat to me. He was my adopted child. I love him. I miss him. I need him. Most of all I need to know if he's dead or not. Otherwise I'll always be left wondering and it will just kill me inside.

I'm really trying to keep busy. I rarely stay at home in the day time. I've joined support groups, and like tomorrow I'm just going to go to this clubhouse set up for people who suffer mental illness and spend the whole day there.

When I'm alone the pain just keeps growing and growing and I don't know how to stop it. I have no benzos anymore because I was abusing them, so now I just have to feel the pain in its full intensity. Is there a way to stop it?

I've read so much about depression and it usually only covers the warped thinking, but this isn't warped thinking. This is true pain. You know that Lady Antebellum song that has the part, "I'd rather hurt than feel nothing at all". Well they must be talking about a different hurt because this pain is really unbearable. Does anyone have any good websites that provide information on how to cope with the pain? I guess part of what I'm feeling is grief for the loss of my cat, but so much is the not knowing part.

I'm trying very hard not to give into my urge to cut, because I just spent Monday being assessed (and turned away yet again) by the Mental Health assessors because I shredded my arm pretty badly..

Please any advice on how to make this pain stop or even just reduce it would be greatly appreciated. Also I should probably mention that meditation for me doesn't work cause when I'm like this I cannot focus on imagining myself in a ball of pure white light or whatever... Thank you all so much in advance.