Sorry About the Elephant

I’d like to start by saying sorry about last Tuesday’s group session.

I know people came expecting a normal workshop. A bit of emotional regulation, a bit of breathing, maybe a worksheet no one really wanted to fill out but everyone politely pretended was useful. There was supposed to be tea, biscuits, a chat about stress, nervous system stuff, and how not to let your brain run off into the scrub at 2 o’clock in the morning carrying a shovel and a list of worst-case scenarios.

Instead, there was an elephant.

So yes, sorry about that.

I do want to be clear, though, that I did not bring the elephant in. I know it was my therapy room. I know it was my old house in the middle of nowhere. I know the kettle was mine, the biscuit tin was mine, the jar of grounding stones was mine, the old armchairs were mine, and the chickens scratching around outside the window were absolutely mine, although they would argue that point if given legal representation.

But the elephant was not mine.

Not exactly.

It had always been there.

Most therapy rooms have one. Mine just finally got sick of being metaphorical.

Usually, it stayed in the corner near the bookshelf, right beside the trauma books and the basket of fidgets. Quiet as a grave. Big as a secret. Most people never saw it. Some felt it. They’d glance over mid-session, go a bit pale, then look back at me and say, “Anyway, it’s probably nothing.”

That’s when I always knew we were getting close.

Because “it’s probably nothing” is where people bury whole bodies.

The group started normally enough. I did the usual welcome. I reminded everyone about confidentiality, unless there was risk of harm, mandatory reporting, or apparently, a supernatural incident involving a large emotional mammal and a biscuit tin.

Then I asked everyone to share one word about how they were feeling.

That was my first mistake.

You’d think after all these years I’d know better than to give humans an opening that small. One word. As if people can be reduced to one neat little label. As if a woman who has survived a marriage, two children, menopause, Centrelink, a dead mother, and a body that wakes up every morning like a dodgy lawn mower can honestly sum herself up with “tired.”

Still, I asked.

People said the usual things.

“Flat.”

“Anxious.”

“Overwhelmed.”

“Okay.”

Then Barry said, “Fine.”

And that was when the room went bad.

Not bad like a horror movie where the lights burst and someone screams.

Worse than that.

The room went honest.

The air got thick. The kettle clicked off by itself. The old floorboards groaned under a weight that had not quite arrived yet. Outside, every chicken stopped scratching at once and looked toward the window. Even the rooster shut up, and if you know roosters, you’ll understand that was the first proper sign of the apocalypse.

Barry gave a little laugh and said, “What?”

The bookshelf moved.

Just an inch.

Then the elephant appeared.

Not all at once. That would have been cleaner. It came in pieces, like the room was remembering it. First the outline of a back. Then a grey ear, torn at the edge. Then one huge amber eye opening in the corner where I keep spare pens and old client handouts. Its tusks curved down toward the rug, not white, but the colour of old bone pulled out of red dirt. There were words scratched into them. Tiny ones. Moving ones.

All the things people had swallowed in that room.

I’d like to apologise to Janine, whose chair was nearest the bookshelf. I understand it is upsetting when a large elephant materialises beside you during a grounding exercise. I also understand that losing one sandal under its left foot would have added to the distress. For what it’s worth, the sandal did turn up later in the garden near the rosemary bush, although it had teeth marks in it and smelled faintly of grief.

I said, “Everyone just take a breath.”

That was my second mistake.

The elephant took one too.

Papers flew everywhere. Worksheets, receipts, my session plan, Barry’s emotional defences. The biscuit tin slid off the table, hit the floor, and opened by itself.

Now, before anyone says I should have ended the session there, I want you to understand something. When you’ve worked with trauma long enough, you get used to odd things sitting in the room. Not usually with tusks, granted. But pain has a shape. Shame has a smell. Lies make the air hot. Fear sits in people’s shoulders like a dog waiting to bite.

So I did what therapists do.

I pretended we still had a structure.

I said, “Sometimes the thing we don’t say takes up space.”

Which was true.

It was also difficult for people to appreciate while an elephant the size of a horse float was staring at Barry like it had read his childhood and wasn’t impressed with the editing.

Barry said, “I don’t know why it’s looking at me. I’m fine.”

The elephant made a sound then.

Low.

Not a trumpet. Not a roar. More like the earth shifting under an old grave.

The lamp flickered. The tissue box split down the middle. The jar of grounding stones rolled off the shelf, and every stone landed in a perfect circle around Barry’s chair.

Moira whispered, “Is this part of the program?”

I said, “Not officially.”

That may not have been reassuring.

The biscuit tin began to rattle.

I should mention the biscuit tin, because this is where things got a bit out of hand. It was one of those old-fashioned tins, the kind every grandmother had, full of shortbread or sewing needles or teeth if your family was strange enough. Mine usually held biscuits. Nice ones too, not the cheap cardboard sort.

But when it opened that day, there were no biscuits.

There was a mouth.

Just sitting inside the tin.

Red. Wet. Small. Human enough to be upsetting.

It smiled.

Then it said, “Sorry about that.”

Everybody froze.

The mouth said it again.

“Sorry about that.”

Lightly. Casually. Like someone bumping your trolley at Woolies. Like a government department losing your paperwork. Like a man who has just broken a woman’s spirit and wants praise for noticing.

Then the apologies started crawling out.

Actual apologies. Little things. Pale and soft and boneless. They flopped onto the rug like wet moths.

“Sorry you feel that way.”

“Sorry, but I was stressed.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Sorry, you know how I am.”

“Sorry, I was drunk.”

“Sorry, I forgot.”

“Sorry, that’s not my department.”

“Sorry, we don’t have funding.”

“Sorry, you don’t meet criteria.”

“Sorry, you seem too capable.”

“Sorry about that.”

The elephant stamped one foot.

The floor cracked.

Not dramatically. Just enough to let us all know the house had made a decision.

Barry went white.

“I said I was fine,” he muttered.

The elephant lowered its head until its great eye was level with his face.

And Barry, poor bugger, started talking.

Not because I asked him to. Not because he wanted to. Because sometimes the truth gets tired of waiting for an invitation.

He said his mother died when he was nine. He said everyone told him to be a man of the house. He said his father shook his hand at the funeral instead of hugging him. He said he had spent forty-three years being useful because nobody had ever taught him how to be sad.

Then he laughed, because men like Barry often laugh right before they fall apart.

He said, “Sorry about that.”

The mouth in the biscuit tin hissed.

The elephant cried.

One tear fell onto the rug and something grew there. Not a flower. Not in the pretty way. It was a little grey shoot with a closed fist on top. The fist opened. Inside its palm was a tiny child’s tooth.

I admit that was confronting.

Janine started crying then. Moira followed. Peter, who had only come because his wife said he had the emotional range of a fence post, made a noise like a tractor failing to start and put both hands over his face.

I tried to bring us back.

I really did.

I said, “Let’s notice our feet on the floor.”

Unfortunately, the floor was no longer where we had left it.

It had started sloping toward the biscuit tin.

The apologies slid first. Then the worksheets. Then the tissues. Then Peter’s chair moved half an inch and he said a word I won’t repeat because this is a professional apology.

The mouth in the tin opened wider.

Behind it was not darkness.

That would have been merciful.

Behind it was a hallway.

Long, narrow, yellow-lit, with old carpet and doors on both sides. Every door had a label.

Things We Don’t Talk About.

Times You Said Yes When You Meant No.

People Who Said Sorry And Kept Doing It.

Bodies That Betrayed Us.

Families That Called It Love.

Systems That Called It Process.

One door at the very end had my name on it.

I chose not to look at that one.

The elephant did.

Rude, honestly.

The chickens outside began pecking the window.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Like little feathered bailiffs.

The old brown hen stared straight at me, and I swear to God she looked as if she’d been waiting years for this and had always known I was slightly full of shit.

That’s when Moira said, very quietly, “My husband apologised every time.”

No one moved.

She stared at the biscuit tin.

“Every time he frightened me, he apologised. Every time he smashed something, he apologised. Every time I packed a bag, he cried. He said sorry so often I started thinking sorry was the same thing as change.”

The hallway groaned.

One of the doors opened.

A cold wind came through the room carrying the smell of old carpet, burnt toast, and fear.

Moira kept talking.

“I accepted the apology because leaving would have made the whole thing real.”

The elephant touched her shoulder with its trunk.

Gentle as a nurse.

The mouth in the tin spat out another apology.

“Sorry, I’ll do better.”

The elephant crushed it under one foot.

It made no sound.

That was worse.

After that, everyone had one.

Peter had the apology from his father, who beat him then bought him a fishing rod.

Janine had the apology from the surgeon who said complications happen and then left her to live inside the complication.

Barry had the apology from every adult who praised him for being strong while he was still small enough to sleep with the light on.

And me?

Well.

I was hoping no one would ask.

The elephant asked.

Not out loud.

It didn’t need to.

It turned that amber eye on me and the words on its tusks rearranged themselves.

What have you called strength because no one came?

There are moments in life where you can either tell the truth or become haunted by your own mouth.

I wish I could say I chose bravely.

I didn’t.

I tried to make a joke.

“Can we keep this client-focused?”

The elephant did not laugh.

The brown hen outside gave one sharp peck on the glass.

Even the chicken was judging me.

So I sat down.

In the client chair.

That felt wrong enough to make my skin itch.

The room went still.

The hallway in the biscuit tin stretched longer. The door with my name on it clicked open by itself.

Inside was a little girl sitting on a toilet floor with her knees to her chest, listening to adults outside the door and learning very early that safety was something you imagined if you couldn’t have the real thing.

Behind her stood every version of me that had ever said, “I’m fine.”

The working one.

The studying one.

The mother.

The therapist.

The woman who could hold other people’s grief like hot coals but couldn’t work out where to put her own.

The one who won awards and then came home too tired to make dinner.

The one who kept turning pain into purpose because purpose looked better on paper.

The one who was scared that if she stopped helping, she might find out no one knew how to help her back.

I said nothing.

The mouth in the tin whispered, “Sorry about that.”

And I hated it then.

Not the tin.

Not the elephant.

The apology.

That gutless little phrase people throw over damage like a tea towel over blood.

Sorry about that.

Sorry your body doesn’t work.

Sorry the system is difficult.

Sorry you’re not eligible.

Sorry you seem too educated to need help.

Sorry you’re too articulate to be struggling.

Sorry you survived so well we mistook it for capacity.

That one hit hard.

The elephant lifted its trunk and made that low sound again. This time the whole house answered. The beams groaned. The windows shook. The old cups in the kitchen rattled on their hooks.

Then the elephant spoke.

Not with words exactly.

More like the thought appeared inside every skull at once.

An apology without repair is just a clean way to leave the mess with the injured person.

Nobody breathed.

Then the biscuit tin slammed shut.

The hallway vanished.

The floor levelled.

The apologies stopped crawling.

The elephant stood in the middle of the room, enormous and sad and no longer willing to be invisible.

So yes, I apologise for the disruption.

I apologise for the crack in the wall.

I apologise for Janine’s sandal.

I apologise that Peter has since reported dreaming of biscuit tins with teeth.

I apologise that Barry now cries whenever someone asks how he is, although personally I would call that an improvement.

I apologise for the chickens gathering outside the window and forming what several participants described as “a poultry tribunal.”

I apologise that the brown hen followed Moira to her car and stared at her until she rang her sister.

I apologise that the group ran forty-seven minutes over time.

I also apologise that the feedback forms were unusable, mostly because every answer had rearranged itself into the sentence, Say the thing properly.

But I will not apologise for the elephant.

Not really.

Because the elephant only did what most of us are too polite, too frightened, or too tired to do.

It refused to let “fine” pass as truth.

It refused to let “sorry” pass as repair.

It refused to let people sit in a room full of their own ghosts and keep calling it coping.

And if that made the morning uncomfortable, well, sorry about that.

No.

Actually.

Not sorry.

Not about that part.

The next group session will proceed as planned.

Tea will be available.

Biscuits will be provided in a clear plastic container with no known portals.

Participants are welcome to bring a notebook, water bottle, and an open mind.

They are also advised not to say they are fine unless they are prepared to explain themselves to the elephant.