Since losing my twin, I’ve struggled with mental health. The life I knew ended with her. What’s left doesn’t feel familiar.
I’ve said it before; life after twin loss isn’t what I expected, and it’s not how I imagined growing older would be. It’s harder. Our routines, our conversations, even the disagreements that once filled our days are gone, leaving a silence that cuts deep.
Being a twin shaped how I understood myself. Even though we were independent, achieved differently and lived separate lives, our souls were connected. Losing her has again changed my sense of identity – it’s not just the loss of a sibling, but of the shared self that should have defined me on my own and how others saw and see me now – independently of my twin.
Instead, we were never seen as separate – grouped together no matter the circumstance. Now, on my own, my separateness and all of my achievements are still invisible. I am still here, and she’s not – and that's also hard.
People talk about grief as sadness, but for me, it’s dissonance. I understand death. I know my twin's okay. But there’s the life that was, full of shared reference points and the life that’s here now, where connections have no match.
There’s a gap between recognition and feeling. I know she’s gone, but I don’t sense it in a way that makes sense. It's like I’m observing my own life from a distance.
Writing helps me to process, to track what’s left. It gives shape to my thoughts. It’s a way of recognising the shift, of naming what’s missing without trying to fix it.
Some days, the words come easily – others days they don't – but I talk to her and write to her as if she's away from me, but living somewhere else – it's my way of dealing with the loss. I'm still adjusting.
This isn’t a story about healing. It’s about adjustment. The reality is that my life continues, but not as it did before. The dissonance of grief remains. I’m still learning how to exist within it, without expecting a resolve. Because it's not resolvable.
