The Invisible Elephant

There is this elephant in the room, she has been there for years. She is an invisible elephant – no one can see her, but we all know she is there.  She lives inside the walls of our home.  She is in the air we breathe, she is in the foods we eat, she is in the sleep we don’t get, and she is in the decisions we make.

Sometimes she demands to be seen, other times she demands to be heard, sometimes she talks fast, sometimes she is loud,  other times she whispers quietly in my ear so that no one knows she is there but me. I……I will always know she is there.

She has a name, but we don’t always use it because of the stigma surrounding it.  Not everyone knows that this elephant lives inside our family and we try hard to camouflage her into the background of our every day lives.  And sometimes, just for a moment, we are able to forget that she is there.

Until the next time she becomes demanding.  Taking sleep, talking fast, so many ideas, so many thoughts.  Projects to be completed, research to be done.  Sometimes she uses other methods to be heard, sleeping too much, thoughts of despair, unable to function.

In case you have not figured it out yet our elephant is Bipolar Disorder.  That is the elephant in our lives.

She will always have a say in the decisions we make because she has become a not-so-silent part of our family.  She is always there trying hard to balance on a ball.  We try not to let her tip one way or another because we are afraid of how big of a crash she will make and how much damage she will make on the way down.