A womb twin survivors story

This was sent to me anonymously very recently:

If this is your story or you have a similar story, please make contact.   I can help.

I am dyslexic. I had insomnia from being a baby and always felt different, alone, mute and like I shouldn’t be here...years before I knew I was a twin. A nursery nurse when I was four described me as ‘a very solemn little girl’. I first attempted suicide when I was eight and failing, told my mum I had done it because : ‘I shouldn’t be here. I don’t want to be here.’  I did whatever I could to please everyone as a child and the thought i had done anything wrong, upset or hurt anyone made me suicidal with despair. 


If I saw poverty or famine or war on TV I felt helpless and pointless. I self harmed throughout childhood because I felt constantly guilty and didn’t know why. I thought I was innately bad and everyone else was innately good.  I wanted to be good, to fit in, to belong, but I constantly felt not human, like I was pretending to be human, wearing a mask, which made me a fraud. 


As I got older the insomnia got so bad I wouldn’t sleep for days on end. I stopped even going to bed. Then I stopped eating. Then I stopped going to school. By the age of twelve I had left school and was smoking, drinking and began using drugs. By eighteen I was alcohol dependant and a heroin addict. I used to attempt suicide by staging ‘accidents’. 


All my life I’ve felt in limbo, neither a part of this world and not apart of any other. Then, after getting clean off heroin, getting two jobs, getting a first class degree and getting all sorts of awards in a matter of six months I just went to a bridge and tried to jump off it.  I was diagnosed with manic depression and said to have had a psychotic episode. 


I work.  I succeed at the things i do.  I feel love for people.  I don’t whinge or blame or hate.  I don’t remember ever feeling hate for anyone or anything.  I think life can be beautiful and this world too...but I just haven’t ever felt like I should be here.  Half of me isn’t even here and I felt that before I knew I was a twin. 


I don’t know whether my chronic loneliness, mute-ness and feeling like I shouldn’t be here is anything to do with having been a ‘Womb Twin Survivor’.   I’d never heard of it before or thought that might be why I don’t remember a time I didn’t feel like half of me is missing. Just my story.


More about the support I can offer here