DAE feel like they didn't actually "survive" the trauma, hence the hollowness ?

Please do not read this if you're in a mentally fragile state, It may be upsetting and hurtful but hopefully it may provide me with a resolution going forward.

I have never felt like the word "survivor" quite resonated with me, sure I am perhaps more functional, self-aware and mature than I have ever been, I should be "alive" by all means, but am I really ?

I understand that trying to apply logic to this subject may not be the most productive way to look at it, but I can't shake the belief that there is only so much a person can endure. Nothing in the universe is infinite, why should a person's capacity for trauma be an exception ? There has to be a limit, a point of no return, past of which the person does really die.

It's a very comforting lie that with enough care, love, and patience (as if the absence of these wasn't a major contributing factor on its own), anyone can be whole again, one that offers solace to the living and hope to the broken. But the cruel and untold truth may be that people do eventually break, we eventually succumb to battles that take more than we can give.

I can't make any connection between the person I see today in the mirror and the picture of the child that was once supposedly me. I have entertained the idea that perhaps it's dissociation and I'm still in there somewhere, but it makes much more sense and feels much more at home for me to think that the person I am today, is just a dim and tiny fragment my past managed to preserve, a fading legacy that my soul died trying to pass onto me. What's left of me is just burnt-out ashes, the memory of the child who had nothing, but stubbornly stood ground against all odds knowing it'd be vain because the child wanted to be remembered. The child selflessly sacrificed its very soul so that I would live and mourn the tragedy.

The fact that I am detached most of the time comes off to most as typical dissociation but what if it's not ? I think I am currently in a somewhat safe state, but no matter what I have tried, from mindfulness to substances, I have found extremely little inside me to be "grounded" to. It's hollow, empty, a void. My soul really is dead, which also explains why I am so adept at masking and mirroring. I am empty and capacious enough to copy anyone's personality. The only time I feel partially alive is when mourning my past, but I fear I am reaching a point where I am coming to see the child as someone to be let go of, and it hurts.

It may also explain why people rarely "choose" us, the real us I mean, not the mask we display to fit in. I have seen many posts where fellows explain that we are not people's first choice. It's perhaps because we're partially empty on the inside, there is nothing to choose, just a poignant tragedy that is slowly fading against time.

I am not by any means suicidal or seeking death, I must live to remember the sacrifices of the child, but I'd be lying if I said I can find fulfillment and happiness in the life I am living.
What are inputs on this ?