Last year around this time, I chose my One Word for 2022: FIGHT. In true ‘fight’ fashion, I told very few people because I didn’t want to be held to it or have it ‘used against me.’ (Stubborn much?) The period of time between the beginning of 2022 and when I left on the journey that would encompass the large majority of this year is a painful blur, which for me is probably just as well, and for the people that love me, quite unfortunate. I was fighting. All the wrong people and things in all the wrong ways. But I was fighting. I fought and fought until my brain and body couldn’t do it anymore. I gave in, or so I thought at the time. Now, I can see, I was embarking on what has been the greatest fight of my life to date. Here is a (somewhat long) piece of that story:
I have lived a whole lifetime this past year. That’s how I try to explain it to people because there is no other way I can think to explain it. I feel like I have lived a whole lifetime; a lifetime of relationships, battles, growth, crises, epiphanies, laughter, tears, fear, joy, pain and everything in between. Like a microcosm of a lifetime condensed down over seven long months in eating disorder treatment. There are no adequate words for this journey, but I want to try and shed the littlest bit of light on what my life has been since I last blogged here.
I stepped off the plane in St. Louis early in the morning on April 7th resigned and defeated. Going back to treatment was the last thing I wanted to do, but it was necessary. Regardless, I was embarrassed and angry that it had gotten to that point again.
I’d like to say that throughout my time at Alsana, I was consistently the Cassie that most of you know. The “me” that I present to the majority of the outside world: kind, easy-going, people-pleasing, rule-following, polite, honest, and helpful. And in my defense, I was all those things at times. At times being the key words. Because as soon as I acclimated into my new “home,” the fight that I thought I’d lost came roaring back. Again, I found myself fighting all the wrong people about all the wrong things. Including myself. Picture a caged animal: lashing out at anything that comes near including the people trying to help it. Yep, that was me. I was angry. I was scared. I was leery of everyone and everything.
My time in residential treatment from April to the end of May was what I assumed would be the entirety of my treatment journey. I got on the plane with the bold assumption that I would be home by the time summer started. Kind of funny looking back on it. I not only didn’t go home at the end of May, but I wasn’t even halfway through my time in treatment.
The time I spent in residential was very important to my journey. There’s something about having no autonomy over literally anything in your life that humbles you pretty quick. But then when you get used to it, you realize just how heavy all the second by second decisions are in real life. Don’t get me wrong, nothing about that time was very relaxing. However, it was the break that my brain needed to get re-nourished and get back online again. I spent many nights on the balcony reading or writing and watching the herd of deer that lived in the woods outside of the secluded house. Residential treatment might have sucked, but the views and serenity of the location absolutely did not. I also took a chance and started making the friends that I promised myself (and my team and my friends and anyone that would listen) I would under no circumstances make. One of those early friendships in particular, would transcend my whole treatment journey and beyond. Lauren became my person in res and little did I know, she would be by my side throughout almost my whole Alsana journey. With her, my heart opened up a little to people, and I attribute a lot of my courage to let others in to how safe she became so quickly during those first two months. She saw me at my best, my worst, my whiniest, and my funniest, and still somehow liked me anyway. Not to mention, our collective humor made everyone’s lives around us (or maybe just ours?) a lot brighter and lighter in a dark time.
My time in those secluded woods consisted of a lot of frustration, helplessness, and anger bordering on rage. I was hurting and scared and guarded. But I was also shown so much compassion, support, and acceptance, and laughed more in that period than I had in probably the whole previous year combined. I fought my treatment team constantly over those almost two months and outright refused to even entertain the thought of their professional advice of staying in STL up until the last minute. However, I eventually walked out of the door at Hawthorn not to go home like I originally planned, but closer to the city into an apartment for PHP (partial hospitalization program). I had no idea just how much what I then saw as another “lost battle” would transform my life.
When I arrived at PHP, everything was different. The support and treatment looked different, going from 24/7 monitoring and support to only eight hours of support and monitoring during the day and nights on my own. My living situation was much different, going from serene, peaceful woods to an apartment next to an extremely busy street and constant traffic noise. I’m not sure how many times I angrily asked Lauren, who was also my PHP roommate, “Where is everyone driving all the time?! Why don’t they just go home?!” or all the nights I turned up my earbuds as far as they would go to drown out all the city noise. The country girl in me had a very hard time transitioning to the city. But the country girl part of me was not the only part of me that struggled to adjust to PHP. I struggled with all the free time and lack of professional support in the evenings. I struggled to make recovery focused choices and quickly fell back into many of the behaviors that landed me in treatment in the first place. Looking back at how much I struggled, I’m so thankful I went to PHP instead of going home.
PHP also brought a brand new treatment team. Rachel and Taylor are probably the best therapist/dietitian pair I’ve ever had at the same time. They are also some of the best people to attest to my whole “fight” theme for the year, because they were the ones that got the brunt of it most of the time. Knowing that the “fight” theme was originally made to be positive, these two rarely got the positive end of it. I yelled, cried, whined, argued, and strategized through sessions and laid, sat, and sprawled in just about every position on their couches and office floors. I was fighting, but true to the theme so fair, not fighting the right people or in the right ways.
Although I was fighting, rebelling, and hardcore struggling throughout most of PHP, PHP is where I really started to find my social footing. This was a fight too, but an internal one. I told myself going into treatment I wouldn’t let myself get close to anyone, but that became even harder at PHP. I told myself making friends with Lauren was good enough for me, but I soon found that I was easily making more friends and becoming someone that my peers trusted to come to when they needed support. My time in PHP became the first time in my life that I felt truly accepted, supported, and genuinely liked, and I found myself (albeit begrudgingly) really leaning into the sense of belonging I felt with my peers and staff alike. I met some of the most amazing humans during this period of time and was able to witness what it looks like to truly fight for one’s truth and happiness, in all the best ways. I felt like I truly belonged, and found people I trusted to let in and see the real me for the first time.
This was also the period of time that I met the other of my two closest friends I would make at Alsana. I had reached the point where I felt like I had made enough friends, and was preparing to pull back from people thinking I would be leaving soon (again, joke was on me with that). But like the rest of this journey, God had other plans. Meeting and getting close to Emma was a turning point, and I fully believe that God placed her in my path for many reasons but maybe most of all, to show me what feeling truly seen, safe, and held truly feels like. Sometimes there just aren’t good words to describe a bond you have with someone, and Emmy is the perfect example of that. It just…is.
I also created close bonds with a majority of the staff, and stepped into more of a leadership role the longer I was there. I had the opportunity to put on my “therapist hat” and even facilitated a few groups on my own. This period of time was when I started to seriously envision myself in a career in the mental health field. This pinprick of light into hope for my future got me through lots of hard days, days that I could only motivate myself to come to programming if I framed it as a job shadowing opportunity instead of something I was doing for myself.
I wish I could say that somewhere in the three months I was in PHP, I got it together and started fighting more for my future and less against the people that were trying to help me. But PHP was a constant fight; against myself, my team, staff, and sometimes even my friends who were trying to help me. Again, I fought my therapist and dietitians’ advice about staying for IOP instead of going home, fought up to the last minute, and again, gave in and decided to stay for IOP (intensive outpatient treatment).
What warmed me up to the IOP idea was the fact that I would be able to keep my treatment team instead of transitioning to a whole new team. This made such a huge difference for my process, which is heavily based in the connection I have with others. I loved my therapist and team in general, and was so thankful to be able to keep them in my final leg of treatment. Even so, I was not happy to be going to IOP. Again, it was a huge change in support. Going from being in programming 7:30-3:30 seven days a week to 8:00-12:00 only five days a week made it feel like the ground was falling out from under me. I would be spending a drastically less amount of time in the place I’d attributed to safety and security and a lot more time on my own, which didn’t feel safe or secure.
IOP is the last step toward going home, and should be when things start getting better and going smoother. But my process has never felt very “normal.” The beginning of IOP for me was pure chaos. I got COVID right as I was transitioning to IOP (as did the majority of the other clients and staff), we went virtual for 2 weeks, and I was moved out of my apartment into one on my own (even though I spent the majority of my waking time in Lauren & Emma’s apartment anyway). At this time, I was also really struggling with behaviors and motivation to get better. Although my therapist and staff kept telling me how much progress I had made, I didn’t feel that way. I felt very stuck, very hopeless, and absolutely terrified to even think about going home without a concrete plan for my future.
The final three months I spent in St. Louis felt pretty tumultuous and whirlwind fast. Those months, more than any of the others, felt like I was living the greatest dichotomy. I was doing well in programming, yet hardcore struggling when I was on my own. I was struggling so badly with my mental health, yet had the closest friends I ever had. There were many instances I was unsure of my future, or if I wanted one, yet was feeling joy again doing things like building forts, sledding down stairs, watching tons of Dance Moms, befriending a neighborhood cat (RACHEL?!), taking Lauren and Emma home to Iowa for an epic ‘farm adventure,’ writing daily corny jokes on my therapist’s board, and laughing more than I have in a long time. I was basking in the connections I had let myself make with my people and feeling so safe, secure, and content in those connections, yet always had one eye on the future and preemptively feeling sad for when I had to leave them.
A common statement you will hear in treatment and therapy is, “both can be true” and I feel as though my time in IOP was a living example of those words. I was so sad, yet so joyful; so safe and secure, yet so terrified; so obsessive and rigid, yet so free. I sat with people in some of their hardest, darkest moments and let them sit with me in mine. I continued to be honest and worked hard in therapy, participated in groups, and tried to remind myself to be present as much as possible because I knew how much I would miss those days when they were over. I learned the depth of love and care that my people had for me in my darkest moments. I fought. I fought my team, staff, my friends, and most of all: my brain. But in these fights, I learned that I had people that were willing to fight for me, even if it meant fighting against me. I also learned that I could fight for myself. And I did.
When my three months in IOP came to an end, I was not ready to go home. I was more stable in my eating disorder and had accomplished so much in therapy and learning about myself. Overall, I was a much different person than when I first arrived in St. Louis. I had adjusted to my new home, my new schedule, my new friends, my new life. I didn’t know much, but what I did know is that I didn’t want to go back to the life that I had been living. When I said goodbye to my team and to the staff that had gotten me through the hardest several months of my life, I felt such an intense sense of loss. But saying goodbye to my best friends, even knowing full well that nothing would change between us other than proximity, felt like the finally stable ground I had longed for for so long was being pulled out from beneath me. As I drove out of St. Louis and headed back toward Iowa, it felt much more like I was leaving home than returning home.
I know this post was long and full of words, yet, for me, these words do not even begin to fully encapsulate the journey I’ve been on this year. Depending on how I look at it, I could say that 2022 was one of the worst years of my life and in some ways, it was. There was so much fear, pain, anger, and grief. But in true ‘both can be true' fashion, as I reflect on all the experiences I’ve had, people I’ve encountered, stories I’ve witnessed, things I’ve learned about myself and about humanity, and all of the acceptance, safety, and love I’ve felt, I realize that 2022 may also have been the most important year of my life to date.
There is so much up in the air right now in regards to my future. I am still so sad and homesick for the home that I knew for the majority of this year especially in the people I’m missing. I’m learning to sit in that grief and to actually let myself feel it, instead of pushing it down. However, I’m also sitting with so much gratitude to have had such a transformational year, yes, full of hardships, but also full of so much acceptance, security, joy, and love.
My One Word for 2022 was FIGHT and boy, did I. For much of the year, I fought all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. But through that fight, I learned that the people who matter, YOUR PEOPLE, will stay. They will stand by you even when you fight them, and they will fight for you even when you don’t make it easy. I also learned what it means to fight my brain and to stay even when the voice in your brain is telling you that it’s not worth it.
Because I chose to fight, I met people who I connected with so deeply that the only explanation is that my soul must have known them in a different life. I made connections that will last much longer than these seven months, and that will undoubtedly transcend the time and space between us until we meet again. Because I chose to fight, I gave myself another chance at life, a life that I want and that I choose, not one chosen for me. One that I now know that I’m capable of achieving.
Undoubtedly, this new life and this next year will come with excitement, but will also likely include leaving things behind. But as I was told before I left St. Louis, “How lucky you are, to have so much to grieve.” And so, so, so lucky…I am.