It's five months into four years through twin loss, and I've split another tooth.
On its own, it's an ordinary event. But it's an event that made me stop and look back.
When I trace the timeline since my twin's loss, I don't just see the moments of her loss. I see years spent living in a state of heightened alertness, where one challenging period rolled into the next, leaving little room to recover before something else demanded my attention.
It's stressful seeing how easily your state of mind in those moments becomes normal. You keep moving, dealing with what's in front of you, rarely noticing why, or what it's asking of you in return. Only later do you begin to recognise the quieter consequences.
When I stop and look back, I can see the timeline with clarity. Somewhere along the way, it's clear my body has been keeping score.
Again.
People often think trauma, once it happens, belongs to the past. They imagine that once the crisis has ended, life returns to normal. But that's not how loss and the body usually work.
The body absorbs what the mind has had no choice but to carry. The effects don't always appear in the moment. They can emerge months and years later, quietly, persistently, asking to be acknowledged.
A split tooth isn't the story. It's a symptom of the story. It's attention that's been elsewhere.
When I trace the events that have brought me here, I see years of navigating loss and circumstances that continued to challenge. I see a body responding to prolonged survival mode.
That's an important distinction.
We can be quick to blame ourselves for what happens physically, as though every consequence is something we should have seen and prevented. The body reflects what it endures. It's telling the truth about experiences we've spent years trying to survive.
Trauma doesn't always leave visible wounds. Sometimes it leaves evidence in places we never anticipated.
That's the conversation we need to have.
Not because splitting another tooth defines my journey, but because the body remembers. It carries a timeline that isn't always obvious until something happens, then something else, and we look back and realise.
