The word that came to mind was recover. And I hesitated, to become sure of what it means. Recover can be read two ways:
to heal, or
to replace a protective layer.
Difficult as things are, I don’t want the second option – to don a carapace, to hide what is there. I don’t want to obey the thoughts that are so often on patrol, for all they come from a protective impulse: “move along there, look away now, nothing to be done… distract, pretend, just cope”.
‘Recover’ comes from rekeverer (13th century Anglo-French), recouvrer (11th century Old French), recuperare (Medieval Latin). Its roots lie deep, linked in origin and meaning with recuperation. We recover when we regain consciousness, when strength is restored, when we resume or retake rightful possession of something. It is also finding again something which was lost. We offer rewards for recovery, often for things of value to us. Recovery is improvement and restoration, it is moving both forwards and backwards or, perhaps, going round in circles, but in a good way.
The word has been lingering in my mind for weeks and now, ironically, I have more time to think, because two little blue test lines rendered me housebound, while COVID does its stuff. So now I seek recovery in all senses.
I know that the ‘body’ and the ‘mind’ are not actual dualities but part of a framework, part of using language and needing frames of reference which help us make sense of being alive. Sometimes when we consider people (ourselves), we think of them as primarily physical beings (how many do I invite to dinner?); sometimes as personalities (how will they get on?). There are myriad approaches – as spiritual souls, as economic units, as individuals, as social forces… – all with differing validity, usefulness, relevance, longevity. And back to body and mind: I am often uncomfortable with the term ‘mental health’, and its implied contrast with – separation from – physical health. The distinction is necessary but also… flawed, merely practical, partial. Recently I read, with a shock of recognition, the description of someone who ‘carried himself as some depressed people do, shoulders hunched forward, head down, he spoke haltingly with little eye contact’. It could have been an exact description of someone I love. I had seen and not realised what their body was expressing. We live inclusively: emotionally, physically, mentally. It’s often helpful to focus on one at a time, but in truth, we live our lives at once, inseparable and intertwined.
That’s been brought home this year, with emotional pain, on occasion, rendering me prostrate or unable to walk. And this week, alongside coughs and a few aches, the symptom of ‘feeling down depressed or hopeless’ (as the Zoe Health Study Covid App puts it) has dominated. Is it just COVID? Or is it that the time and quiet presented by being mildly ill and housebound has allowed a backlog of feelings to surface? Are these in any way exclusive options?
And, given how intertwined and complicated it all is, how do I recover?
I have said before that the house in Hampshire has been a metaphor. While we lived there, an unidentified water leak developed. There were no outward signs, apart from our water bills becoming, persistently, a little high. Even with children returned from college, it didn’t quite make sense, it didn’t add up. But we had a busy life, and it remained an unformed niggle and, for me, just a sense of guilt: yet another thing– check the water bill – I ought to have done but never got round to. Eventually, after we had moved to London, the tenants returned from a holiday to a distinct smell of damp; experts were engaged and the subterranean leak was discovered. Clearly by now it had been there for a long time: floors had to be taken up, the foundations dried out.
Houses can be repaired and you can make an insurance claim to help cover the costs. Recovering oneself is more complex. There have been years of living what was, in many ways, a happy enough life, yet which, at foundation, was leaking away all the time. None of this was disclosed or overt, until now. The only thing that does feel indisputible is that the effects are cumulative, and themselves cause other reactions and responses. Drop a pebble into a pond and you see the ripples spread and disperse. In an enclosed space, waves reflect and there is interference. Keep dropping the pebbles in as well and it’s impossible to discern any pattern at all: everything is just choppy and disturbed. Unknown, unrecognised, the impact was all on the subconscious level which will even now be affecting my capacity to understand: when trying to be self-aware, we are both agent and subject.
The second blue line was much fainter today. My body, it seems, knows what it is doing on one level. And despite the many flaws in execution, many external things (vaccinations, tests) have combined to make my illness mild, predictable, controlled. So, perhaps, I need to continue trusting the professionals – I won’t say goodbye to my therapist yet – and hope that my self knows what it is doing on other levels as well.
I thought I was seeking recovery but, perhaps, I can recover without knowing exactly what is happening. If I care for myself, as one does in an illness, if I seek and accept the care of others, then perhaps it will simply … happen. I am not searching for recovery, I am yearning for the thing which was lost, which is health. An even older word, Old English – hælþ “wholeness, a being whole, sound or well,” It’s roots are Proto-Germanic hailitho, from PIE kailo – none of which etymological tracing I undertand except these are roots lie deep in the origins of language itself. Its older senses are “whole, uninjured, of good omen” and for me, there is the odd fact that another related, slightly archaic word is hale (as in ‘hale and hearty’) which in Old English was simply hal. This is my son’s name, at my husband’s suggestion. From the same root are words in Old English and Old Norse meaning holy, sacred.
This word cluster of good, deep-rooted, meaningful, essential things: I don’t know where they can be found. I don’t know to what extend they can be found. And I am focusing, I think, on single words because I do not know how they may yet connect. I find my mind reverting to deep-seated powerful imagery from childhood reading: fairy tales, mythical quests and Narnia; we can only know our own stories, no-one else’s; we can never know what would have happened; all that is asked of us is to discover what will happen.
“You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus…
Fare forward, voyagers”
The Dry Salvages, T. S. Eliot
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