I've had many changes to deal with throughout the decades. The loss of my twin is another significant loss and change that has left me living in the strange, disorienting space between who I was before and who I am now.
Trauma continually overlaps. It never goes. The person I used to be has gone. Loss has changed my life, and who I am. Tinnitus, grief, anxiety, depression, being a second premature twin with cerebral palsy, and digestive problems has made life much harder to plan.
Each day is difficult. Some days I seem to fair better, while other days keep me immersed in health issues, including digestive problems, anxiety, depression and exhaustion. Tinnitus is also a constant intrusion that follows me everywhere, making peace feel harder to reach.
It's more than noise; it infiltrates my thoughts, disrupts my rest, and removes any true sense of escape. There are times when I hate where I am, when the weight of it feels unbearable.
Writing helps me to cope. It gives me a way to express what I’m feeling and process what I find difficult to explain. It can't remove my grief, tinnitus, or the difficulties of rebuilding, but it does give me an outlet, somewhere to place them.
Living without my twin is hard. My life has always been difficult, but this loss has forced me into a daily dialogue between grief, resilience, and reconstruction – I have been given no choice.
Now, three years in and I am still facing the daunting task of becoming someone new: a person shaped by decades of suffering, and by endurance. Someone still rebuilding.
And that process is neither simple nor easy – but it is real.
