The Story Behind Pink Elephant

I’m on medical leave from college after two stays at a psychiatric hospital for severe depression, and I won’t be graduating with my friends this spring. When I was a starry-eyed freshman, I would have told you without an ounce of hesitation that I would graduate within four years. But from COVID, to illness, to the deaths of important people and other unexpected events, college hasn’t been the “best four years” of my life. Last week, I bought a pink elephant plushie with a graduation cap, and, although it puzzled my parents at first, it was a huge step towards radically accepting the reality of my predicament. Eli the Pink Elephant represents three of the most important ideas that have kept me alive so far through this episode of suicidal depression, and I hope that this blog will help others in pain.

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1. The Pink Elephant Paradox is the idea that trying to push intrusive thoughts away results in them sneaking back into your mind. When most of us try not to think about pink elephants, the pink elephant becomes the elephant in the room. My psychiatrist told me that suffering = pain x resistance. When suicidal or other intrusive thoughts creep into my mind and plague my consciousness, I acknowledge that these are nothing more than thoughts and urges unless I choose to act on them. Trying to push them away makes them worse. Eli the Elephant reminds me that it’s okay to not be okay sometimes. I ride the pain like a wave. I let it come and go without resisting it.

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2. During my second stay at the hospital, I felt more hopeless than I had ever felt in my life. Phil, a mental health specialist, taught me that guilt and shame aren’t the same things. Guilt is the feeling we get when we do something wrong, and it compels us to make amends. Shame, on the other hand, is the feeling that we are the pink elephant in a herd of gray ones. It’s the feeling that there is something intrinsically wrong with who we are that we need to hide. Eli reminds me that, for all my idiosyncrasies, I do belong.

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3. A pink elephant stands out from the crowd. I am grateful that I have grown as a person during my time away, and that my definition of “success” is more than just collecting the standard list of awards and internship titles that many students treat as trophies. Mental illness has helped me feel everything—both the good and the bad—more intensely, like everything has been dialed up. I cry harder, but I also laugh louder. I have lost friends, to suicide, and to misunderstandings about mental health. But I have also nurtured the relationships with family and friends who matter the most in my life.

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Eli’s graduation cap is a reminder that we are stronger than we think, and that we can make it to the finish line in spite of everything. At many points throughout my hospitalizations, I was convinced that I wouldn’t make it to graduation. Eli reminds me that when—not if—I graduate from college, my degree will mean so much more than if I had walked across the stage this spring.