For 15 years I’ve been writing about mental health from the outside – strategies, wellness, insights. But I never wrote about depression, because I didn’t realise I was living it." – Ilana Estelle
There are truths we carry that never quite resolve. I deal with depression I didn't know I did. I feel better for saying. I learned later that my twin also dealt with depression. It's not surprising for me, given decades of trauma and that trauma still continues to follow. For my twin too, but differently to me.
Now without my twin, life is harder. I'm very much aware that having to navigate this difficult changing world without her has got something to do with it.
I also live with difference, which exacerbates my limitations. Anxiety and depression have taught me about resilience, but it is my twin’s life and absence that quietly underpins much of my emotional landscape. Without her there is an element of struggle.
Although I know we would have both mellowed into the next phase of our lives, now I struggle with the reality that I'm having to do it all on my own. That's not how this should have gone.
Sometimes loss and grief are just the realisation that you miss someone you never fully got to know. It's about learning to quietly put one step in front of the other. It's also the realisation that the steps I'm taking are already heavy with the battles I still get to deal with.
Although it's all too difficult, I am still moving. As I edge forward slowly, I continue to write and to reflect, to give understanding a chance – to know that it comes not in fixing, but in the naming of what it is. That I am not only dealing with depression, but also loss... and I am lonely.
And today, I am choosing to say these things. I know my life will never be the same without her. We were both fumbling in the dark. We both had difficult lives. Losing a duplicate is not the same loss. Without her – my life is harder. And how I get to deal with her loss is not linear.
Most days, with depression and anxiety, there is little motivation. I struggle to get dressed and to put one foot in front of the other. It's okay to call it out. It's okay to say.
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