I still can’t wrap my mind around all the events of this past year. I’ve been trying to reflect and to really look deep into the past twelve months of my life, but in doing so, I’ve found it so incredibly overwhelming. The saying that goes, “A lot can change in a year,” well, I’ve never found so much truth in that statement than I do in this moment. A lot can really change in a year, and for me, it has.
When you are in the depths of something, it’s really hard to see the big picture. When you’re struggling, it’s easy to get selfish and only think about you, your pain, and how to make the pain stop. It’s easy to make it all about you. That’s exactly what I have done this past year. I’ve been looking at my journey as something that is just mine. Although that is true, I’m slowly realizing that my journey is closely intertwined with the journeys of those that love me the most. This year has been overwhelming and full of changes for me, yet it has also been the same for my people. It’s been easy for me to obsess about the events of this past year, and make it all about me. But what I know now, is that there have been people walking this road with me and their stories are just as important and powerful as mine.
Last year at this time, I was incredibly sick. I didn’t know just how sick I was at the time, but the people closest to me did. My youngest brother, Gabe lived with me through most of September and early October, the time leading up to when I went to treatment. A time where I was somehow functional in my public life, but steadily and seriously deteriorating behind closed doors. I’ve put some things together from my journals and the snippets of memories that I do have; however, being in the starved state that I was in, I don’t remember much about this time. Although it bothers me to not have these memories, it has also allowed me to disconnect from the seriousness of my situation. Gabe, however, did not have this luxury. You all have heard much of my story from this past year, now it’s important to me that you hear his.
Hello all, my name is Gabe Bardole. You may have noticed that I am not Cassie Bardole, the regular writer of this blog, or at least I hope you have as we have both just told you as much. No one need be concerned, she is doing well. She just asked that I write a guest post here, something to the effect of “How I Became Cassie’s Person.” I’ll do my best to now do that as honestly as possible.
I became a "Cassie’s person" primarily because of some mice. This sounds ridiculous, I know, but it’s true. When Cassie had gone from walking down an unhealthy decline to falling off the unhealthy ledge I was at my parent’s home, in the basement, watching television. I had had a few medical problems myself, nothing severe enough to kill me, but severe enough to warrant medical withdrawals (yes, plural, twice) from school. This left me with a little pain, next to no energy or ambition, and a lot of time. I watched a lot of TV. Cassie was nice enough to visit me, by which I mean come to Rippey and use the very loud treadmill disturbing my borderline comatose existence. We were, collectively, doing very well.
One night, and I can’t tell you which with any certainty as I wasn’t keeping a very in-depth record of the time I was spending, Cassie called our father borderline hysterical about seeing mice in her house. Our dad, being Dad, packed a toolbox full of traps, steel wool, and some other odds and ends he thought that might be helpful. Not all of it was very helpful as it was well past dad’s bedtime, so I volunteered to go along.
To our shared surprise, there were in fact mice at her house. We had kind of thought that she was doing something between making them up and hallucinating them. She has always been very good at having anxiety, a trait that I have grown into as well, and a bit of a hypochondriac. When mice were actually present we flew into action, setting traps, plugging holes, putting bunched up towels and t-shirts under doors to stop the flow of mice throughout the dwelling. When we had finished, by which I mean Dad had finished, we collectively decided that I’d stay on the couch just in case.
This happened either twice or three times before we again collectively decided that my presence was probably a good idea all of the time. To this day, I’m still not sure why this was considered a good idea. I wasn’t particularly helpful, I didn’t catch or kill any of these mice myself, I continued oversleeping and watching too much TV, I made dumb jokes and ate her food and helped really confuse her dog’s biology. He would hang out with me during the day, which pretty much meant either sleeping or watching TV. Cassie would come home and they would then walk (or run, I guess, I was generally too lazy to tag along) for several hours. I was mostly just a warm body in the house.
This was something that the house needed. For one, I was able to let the exterminator in and end the mice scourge. I was also the only human in the house with a warm body. Cassie, as stated earlier, had fallen off of the unhealthy ledge. With the sheer amount of exercise she was doing, and the little she was eating, not only was she always cold, but her brain was working at about 25% capacity. In retrospect, I should have suggested more board games. I would have absolutely demolished her. I was around to see what was happening, more so than anyone else at that time, and was able to see that what was going on had jumped from bad to worse without almost anyone noticing.
My presence there was helpful in a few ways, I suppose. I was able to suggest eating something, really anything at that point was a win. Did she want to get and eat some cookies from Hy-Vee? Hell yeah, those count as calories and give the body something to burn that isn’t her brain. I was able to go on some walks with her, to hopefully shorten them up as I was not about to run five miles on a Tuesday. To be slightly more exact, I was not, and am not, willing to run five miles on any day of the week. Sometimes this would shorten the exercise for her, some days it’d shorten the exercise for Rocky, some days I wouldn’t be up for it and I could at least make sure that she made it home. Any and all of these were wins. At the end of the day, after she had fallen asleep on the couch, I was able to make sure she got to bed. Mostly, this was just so I would have somewhere to sleep, but it was still good thing for her as she would shiver without the ten blankets on her bed. She couldn’t really afford those shiver-calories at that point. Her body was burning books to heat the library.
Then, they were able to get her into the Meadows. My sister, who I had watched waste away in front of me for weeks, was going somewhere to get better. And as she had decided to get help (with some major coaxing on a lot of our parts), I decided to work my way up too, if I could. Two weeks after she got in, I started my job. It’s going very well. I’m writing this at four in the afternoon only because I just got my appendix out. Not everything is perfect, but things seem to be on the up and up. While she was gone, I was able to educate myself with what was available, the internet and some books that she happened to have at her house. When she got home, I was able to read up on things more specifically geared to what she has. It wasn’t much, but it helped tremendously to have even a vague understanding of what was going on with her and in her.
Living with Cassie at times was terrifying. Watching someone you love shake like they were just pulled from the Titanic wreckage is terrifying, especially in early fall, before the leaves have even started to change. Sitting and waiting for forty-five minutes longer than was estimated while your sister runs in the dark is terrifying. Trying to wake someone up after falling asleep on the couch at eight in the evening, and having that be an almost insurmountable task is terrifying. Being the only one to know just how bad it has really gotten is terrifying.
Being there for my sister throughout this year hasn’t been easy and I haven’t always done it very well. I’ve made mistakes big and small, I didn’t write her any letters when she went to the Meadows the first time, and only one the second time. I hope that I’ve made up for some of those indiscretions through other acts, or just by being here to listen when she needs me.
At this point, I don’t know how this story will turn out. Her second trip to the Meadows is a pretty jarring reminder that this story isn’t finished, that we aren’t living in the epilogue to this saga of self-discovery and healing. There is no way to know exactly where we are at this moment, no way to know when the next twist will come or where the story will end once and for all. Barring tragedy, I doubt we’ll even notice that the conclusion has been reached until years later. That is my hope, at the very least.
What I do know is that I’ll be here. I’ll do what I can all along the way and hope that what I do is the right thing. I love my sister. I’ll do whatever I can for as long as I can to help her. I hope that it will be enough.
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