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You are certainly not despairing.   Moments/hours/days/years can and have been experienced by the great saints.  But that knowledge does not help us unless we know the HOW of it.  When a great fear takes hold of the soul you can be certain the enemy perceives that God is about to offer a great grace to the chosen soul.  The penitent has the tool of KNOWING this, which in turn triggers off the spiritual gift of fortitude.  You cannot stop this from happening because God is merciful and does it without any help from us.  Nobody can separate you from God unless you actively will it as described in above post where St. Thomas is very clear about it.

This is the true understanding of Mercy.  God gives us moments to know and experience the weight of our sins so that we have to throw ourselves completely on His Mercy.  There is nowhere else to go!  At such times we are humbled knowing our pitiful state.  When we emerge after patiently co-operating with this action a great chunk of our inherited sin of pride has been chopped off and replaced with humility.  The saints learned to welcome these times.  They thwarted the devil by their ever-ready submission and used the fear to come close to our Saviour and Lord.

Thank you everyone for your advice and prayers!  

Very helpful.

I feel encouraged. :)