A healing path (3) The Black Hole - betrayal

In the Black Hole, which is the story of the death of your womb twin, is also the story of your twin's brief life, which could be measured in hours, days or months, depending on what happened.  The trouble is that a promise was made at conception, that there would be two, but then there was one.

That sense of a disappointed expectation is a betrayal. It's a sense of being precipitated into an alien world for which one is not  equipped.  Betrayal breeds resentment in the betrayed, and when life betrays you, there can be no other response but to resent life itself.  Life has been cruel and you have been hurt by the simple act of being the sole survivor.  That is a raw deal indeed.


The betrayed become cynical that there can be any good in the world, at least for them.  To lose a twin (in whose company one was hard-wired for duality in the first weeks of life)  and to be left alone, feels like a general betrayal of trust.  Then nothing feels certain or sure; anything can be taken away from you, even the things you hold most dear, and you would be powerless to stop it.   Some people call it "being angry with God."

Along with a sense of betrayal comes guilt, the dread that there was "Something You Did", that made your twin die.   Its "All Your Fault", you are a murderer.

The whole thing fuels a general sense of being helpless in the face of circumstances, and a general lockdown into a kind of partial half-life, where much is left unused and unexpressed, lest it be snatched away.

I wrote this in 2003, as I began to understand my own Black Hole and the way it had always held  me back....

Halfness is a divided soul
I walk on a one-legged limp-
I see one-eyed with no depth of vision
I cannot tell how near you are to me. 

One side is emptiness and death;
An unslaked thirst; a mirage of completion:
A cracked box, empty and crumbling into dust. 

What was there was something: nothing now.
The other side is yearning and pain
Tears for two, and anguish for more than myself
An empty chair at the feast of life.
My voice is stilled by the sheer silence of you.

How can I ever find you if I let you go?
Will we both be forever dying
Hung in a hammock over the abyss
Clinging to our half-life to be together?

The treasure chest stands between us
My life, my voice, my strength, is there
Locked away for you for many years:
I want: I may:- and now I will.

Yes, there is hope. The Black Hole doesn't last forever - unless you let it.