Althea Hayton YOU TOO MIGHT BE A WOMB TWIN SURVIVOR IF...... Stories for teenagers YOU TOO MIGHT BE A WOMB TWIN SURVIVOR IF.... Introduction Here is Onli, who is a womb twin survivor. His tiny womb twin is always in his heart. He will guide you through some of the main effects on the sole survivor when a twin has died in the womb. If you don’t know or are not sure, Onli will help you to decide whether you did once have a twin. You may not share in all of the feelings that Onli has, but remember that womb twin survivors are very different from one another, according to exactly what happened to their twin. When you read the stories, you may find your own feelings described. By the time you get to the end of the series of stories, you will have a clearer picture of the kind of womb twin survivor you are. At the end of this book there is a checklist of physical signs that you may find useful. I hope that you find the stories interesting and helpful. They have been provided for this book by dozens of wonderful womb twin survivors from all around the world,. They were written to help other womb twin survivors to understand themselves better. I hope that this book and the stories it contains will help you too. i 1 “All my life I have had a SOMETHING MISSING sense of something missing” SOMEONE IS MISSING by Judith I have always hated being alone and was very imaginative. Except I had a feeling I would get made fun of for - having an “imaginary friend,” so I kind of talked to him in my mind. My mother told me I didn’t have a twin. But I swear I did. Maybe she just didn’t know it. But it's like I’m looking I feel like someone is through photos of me as a child and I feel missing. I always feel like someone is missing. I always feel this this emptiness. emptiness. I dream about him all the time and what our lives would be like if he was here with me. I wish I had some friends that knew how this feels, because it’s pretty unbearable when I have NO one that understands me to relate and talk about our emptiness together. Which honestly, I think I need. Also for some reason I am attracted to twins tremendously. I dated a twin. And I’m 3 still friends with him. In a way I envy twins. I admire the way they can finish each other’s sentences. Me and my ex are like that way too. I honestly feel whole around him and his brother. But dating other people, I just feel nothing. Maybe it’s because we both have that twin bond inside. MISSING TWINS by Tom I learned about twins I am a man and I was a twin with my twin when I read my first Sweet Valley Twins dying in the womb. I am the youngest of book. I was aware four but my next nearest sibling in age is that it was a twin brother I wanted or nearly nine years older than me. My family who was “missing.” never spoke about the twin with me and I don't even know if it was a boy or girl. I have always felt restless and alone. I used to think it was because I was in effect an only child, being so much younger than my brothers and sister, and from a violent family. I was a teenager before things emerged that I had been a twin, but sadly 4 my mum died before she could tell me much. Her last 11 years were in a wheel chair following a bad stroke, so her memory was mixed. My dad I never stayed in touch with, so beyond knowing I was a twin, I know very little else. I never used to think that it mattered, until recently, when during the People's description past 18 months I started counselling with of how they felt were my partner. I started to look at my emotions. so close to how I I looked at “missing twins” when they die in feel, that I know I need to take this the womb. People's description of how they more onboard. felt were so close to how I feel, that I know I need to take this more onboard. MY TWIN BROTHER WAS MISSING by Kim I clearly remember how I felt the time I learned about the existence of “twins” (that there is such a thing) and the thoughts that raced at the back of my mind. I felt indignation and was confused as to why I 5 didn't have one. I learned about twins when I read my first Sweet Valley Twins book. I was aware that it was a twin brother I wanted or who was “missing.” I have never doubted my sexuality and was never confused with regard to which gender I wanted to be, but although I am very much a girl, I have also been always aware of my marked boyishness in certain ways, which Although I am very much a girl, I have everyone around me would attest to. The also been always family and I thought it to simply be due to aware of my marked boyishness in my growing up with boys for siblings and certain ways, which cousins in the family compound. everyone around me would attest to. I chanced upon a Wikipedia article on “twin- less twins” and suddenly, everything seems to be making sense. 6 2 REJECTION “I fear rejection” MY MOTHER SAID I WAS A MURDERER by Alison I’m never sure if my grief from being a surviving twin has been from my treatment of me from my family since birth, or from actual trauma relating to the loss of my twin. From the time I was very small, my mother I tried to be very, would occasionally burst into anger at me, very good all the and accuse me of being a murderer: “You time, in order to killed your sister. You were too greedy. You prove to her that I was not a bad sucked up all the food in the womb, and left person. But nothing I her with no nourishment. It's all your fault!” did worked. Even at the age of two or three, I knew she had to be projecting. I knew I couldn't possibly have consciously tried to kill my twin (who died, by the way, not in the womb, but two months after birth). But my mother's rage affected me very strongly, as it was part of my everyday life. 8 As a result, I tried to be very, very good all the time, in order to prove to her that I was not a bad person. But nothing I did worked. There were four surviving children in my family. The two oldest were separated by a large gap in age. But my sister who was close in age to me sensed that I was to be the scapegoat, and, also wanting very much to comfort our depressed mother, abused My father would jeer me in turn. Thus, she turned into the good, at me when I said saving, helping, comforting child, my something smart and tell me with utmost mother's ally, whereas I was always the contempt that I hated one, the greedy one, the one who did would make a good everything wrong. lawyer. The irony of this is, I was actually the one who did well in school and never got into trouble, whereas my sister got bad grades and constantly was getting into trouble. But when I brought home my first-grade report card, which I was very proud of because I had gotten mostly A's, my mother became very angry: “You're just trying to make your 9 sister look bad!” After that, I never showed my parents my report cards, and they never asked to see them. My “good” behaviour was ridiculed constantly by both of my parents, and I was constantly called “goody-two-shoes” and “pollyanna.” My smartness was also ridiculed, and the fact that I liked to read a lot of books. My father would jeer at me My oldest sister told when I said something smart and tell me me that my mother never wanted to hold with the utmost contempt that I would make or touch me, and that a good lawyer. she would instead hand me to her to Both of my parents were educated, with nurse and hold... higher degrees, and my father was a university professor who was very well read. So their hatred was clearly personal and had nothing to do with their own values. As my sister and I became teenagers, she became even more of a brat and a bully, and her badness was unmistakable. She got into trouble with drugs and alcohol, boys, shoplifting, etc., and continued to do 10 very poorly in school. She had mental problems, was physically violent and a pathological liar. But none of that changed my mother's feelings towards her, and none of my accomplishments, which started to pile up, changed her feelings towards me. My sister was in fact so difficult and so mentally ill that I had to constantly escape from her, as I felt myself in danger of her Once I started violence and bullying.