Hey Groucho
Firstly I admire your resilience, if it was me starting out (relatively speaking) and all that shit had hit me, I would have chucked bikes, so well done for sticking it out. Now is the time to start learning about bikes mate. Enough folk on here have offered to help on numerous occasions and advice was given to enlist on a bike mechanics course at college.
It probably hurts to add up the cost over the last 18 months, but weigh that against the cost of a night school course and I bet you would have been quids in both monetarily and self satisfaction wise, so come on mate take the plunge now