Through from my sister's eyes

         For many years after Kelly left home I did not speak with her often, but I noticed a pattern starting to form in her life that one does not have to speak to another to see. I often wondered if she had left home merely because she was just another teen throwing a fit, or running to fill a void, or maybe to escape a life she did not want to be a part of. After she left home I saw her move from state to state, and from relationship to relationship. It was at that time when I realized she must have been struggling with something more. I know her moving around a lot had to do with her being married into the military, but her going from relationship to relationship I feel was because there was no one willing to stay to help her fight her illness. After about ten or more years of watching her life from the outside she moved back to California, and that's when we began to keep in touch with each other. My family and I would try to go visit her family as often as possible, after just a few visits to her home I learned she had been on medication for bipolar disorder, I also noticed she liked to drink a lot, I was very concerned with this because we frequently read on most prescription bottles not to mix medications with alcohol, but what could I say to a sister that had been distant for so many years I had just begun to enjoy the new relationship we were trying to build. One night I received a call from her, she had been fighting with her husband and asked me to pick her up so I did, the next day everything was back to normal as if nothing had ever happened, but this would not be the last time I would get a call from her like that. Most of the calls I would get from her when she was having an episode would be her telling me she was getting a divorce and to come get her. Little did I know that I knew nothing at all about how this illness works as many of us don't, until I called her one day to see how she was doing, she started crying hysterically, I couldn't understand a word she was saying, until finally she would calm down a bit, she would say " I don't want to be like this" , " I don't want to be here", hearing the pain in her voice made me feel heartbroken, but I just didn't know what to do or say to lift that heavy weight from her heart.