The art of being capable

Capable.  It's a word I've used a lot, through both illness and recovery.  It changes its meaning according to where my head is.  It's been both destructive and constructive.

When I first became ill, I was 'capable'.  Successful, even.  Success was a useful mask for a mess of emotion - like everything else I was doing at the time, I grieved successfully.  I lost the most important person in my life, and knew the route I was meant to go down - Shock, Pain, Guilt, Anger, Depression, Acceptance.  I did them all successfully, within the space of about a month.  I was even capable of doing emotions right.  Keep them quiet if any step out of the prescribed order, carry on being successful at Doing Things.  Be capable.

Only trouble is that capable actually meant squashing every unrequired emotion and indeed most needs.  Including the need to digest food, acknowledge my continued feelings of grief and admit that actually, I wasn't ready to be independent.  Capable was a hiding place, a protective device and a means of self-sabotage.

After a year of therapy, I learned that my definition of Capable was preventing me from asking for the help I desperately needed, and stopping me from getting the support I longed for, and I more-or-less abandoned it overnight.  There comes a point, when you begin to consider allowing the mask to slip, and suddenly the energy required to continue being 'capable' is too much, and in my case it fell apart completely.

The trouble is that I felt entirely helpless at this point - the trick is balance.  I don't have a lot of this.  Life is black, or it is white.  It is night, or it is day.  It is collapse, or entirely come together.   I like to think that recovery is showing me a bit of the fascinating in-between - the greys and mists of dawn that are neither night nor day.

It is choosing the parts of Capable that suit me.  It is amazing how the little things change an entire experience.   I hate being alone at home overnight, but if I can engage adult thinking a little, it becomes bearable, and I cope, rather than becoming a sobbing, terrified mess.  I do this by being capable.  I light a fire, to keep warm.  I cook a meal (this is hugely significant to me - I was never allowed to be involved with cooking as a child), and I remember to put the bin out.  Tiny, insignificant things, that almost every 25 year old thinks nothing of, but to me are the difference between being the inarticulate, desperate, lonely child who cannot manage alone, and being myself, the woman, adult, wife - Capable human being.

Such a significant word.  Such a difference in the way I use it now to a year ago.  There isn't any need to be successful or perfect - capable simply means making the best of what I have and can do, and consequently managing to move forward, even in situations where I am very afraid.

I will continue to embrace Capable, as long as it helps me to discover my adult self.