Hi Mim,
I don't know you, but I don't think you've lost your abilities to cope because you are alive.
There are many sorts of coping mechanisms, and if you don't recover the way you used to, you can still recover but thanks to other means. As I said in my introduction post, I have been through a stage where after long therapies and painful treatments, I was told by my medical professionals and forced to admit because of reality that I would never 'recover'. I would have to 'learn to live with it' - and that is brutal to accept. Crying is normal, if not necessary to be able to rebounce later. This grief - of the former you, of your hopes to be like before or like you wished to - is normal in a such situation. But... That is just a stage. Hopefully, there will come a day when you will realize you can have a happy life in spite of what is eating you up inside. Sometimes, one has to be lost to find themselves.
I know this sounds absurd because there will be bad days, and if you feel depressed right now, you won't see any sense in what I've just wrote. It may even sound cheesy. Yet, that happens. There are good days. There are happy days with you being different than anything you could imagine, and it is alright. That compensate with the bad days, and sure you'd have prefered to lead a different existence but that just demonstrates how much alive you actually are - because it fits with what life is: "life is what happens when you are busy making other plans".
Maybe you should make a journey far away from your home?... Go on a trip of a lifetime, to grieve and reborn, to find your new self, move on the next step. It's very therapeutical. Might cost a lot but the benefits are extraordinary. Isn't there a special place on Earth you feel drawn to? Are you familiar with some elements in particular? Losing an old self can be felt like a a death, but you can also see it as a rebirth, a spring and a new dawn for a new self that can be better than expected. Life is always impermanent, by nature it flows. Nothing remains static, and that is a reality one must learn to accept with sensibility and elegance. It is normal to be sad, but it is also something to rejoyce because when something dies, another born. Death is not an end, but merely a transition, for all in the Universe is about transformation, transfer and movement. Once you learn to live in the flow, fear leaves you. You become confident again.
I can relate somehow to what you wrote. After I was told I would never recover, I was so upset that I felt I was dying inside, and I was probably dying somehow - symbolically- my old self, and the self I dreamt to become and that I would actually never embody. I did something crazy, and yet, these experiences brought so much light in my life that I can say they were some of the best moments of my existence. I love water, wind and cold. I was drawn to Argentina for a very long time... I did a trip from England to Ushuaia, the southernmost city of planet Earth. I went as far as I could, I cried on desert cold beaches, I went to see 'the end of the world'. It helped me grieve... and accept the end of my world. I have later travelled up to Brazil where I visited the Iguazu falls, and I sort of prayed them to wash away my pain. I looked for some kind of purification and beauty in Nature to keep some reasons to go on despite the dark pain inside. Finally, I went to see the glaciers in the desert of Patagonia where I imagined my negative emotions would freeze, turn into solid ice and put to sleep. I focused on the strange landscapes, a cold windy yellow desert with lakes of turquoise milky water like I've never thought could exist. A sky that stretches... An impression of being in an amazing dream, on a moon in another galaxy. I was feeling pain because of PTSD at that time (i.e. muscular pain), but now, I only remember the best.
After death, a rebirth takes place. A rebirth you can embrace. = ) Take care.
