Story of an Identical Twin with an Inner Twin

No relationship compares to that of identical twins. I often felt sorry for ‘singles’. How lonely they must feel. I sensed a private wavelength only two identical minds can detect. Eve and I often didn’t need words. We understood each other’s moods, fears, and ideas— a mirrored experience.

Life as a Mirror Image Twin

But twinhood is not the magical telepathy as portrayed in films. We never ‘heard’ each other’s voices in our heads. Instead, our parallel wiring and shared childhood meant we made similar connections to things. Our closeness was real but grounded by living side‑by‑side.

Despite what others saw, I always felt different from Eve. That was her name - Eve. I was the driving force — the one inventing games and solving problems. I was the tomboy interested in meteorology and science in jeans and T-shirts. Eve crocheted, macraméd, and read agony‑aunt columns. She embraced growing up and boyfriends; I clung to childhood. She was my counterpoint, my resilience, and my life‑raft. Without her, my childhood would have been a flat, grey wasteland.

Difference Between Identical Twins

But being the caretaker twin made my dysfunctions stand out sharply. Something about me differed to Eve. I suffered these…vile intrusive thoughts. A private sick terror struck me when an episode came along. The following is taken from my book, Mirror Image Shattered.

"Episodes of sick terror used to blight my deepest childhood. I clung to Mum, obsessed by the notion of being stifled and crushed. I visualised a mouth stuffed beyond bursting point and of a skull mangled and distorted. A face would then catch fire within a smouldering cave of ominous drumbeats. Occasionally, sleep approached in a snowstorm and a wall of sound. I would lay awake for hours, dreading sleep-onset in the belief I would turn into a skeleton or fall into a coma."

I dreaded bedtime. The lights had to stay on all night, to my siblings’ annoyance. My school photos show a haunted gaze, dark shadows beneath my eyes. I developed obsessive compulsive rituals — wiping imagined germs from my hands, listening for creaking stairs, fearing someone was hiding in the loft. Alan Garner’s The Owl Service, with its scratching sounds in the ceiling unsettled me. I never finished this book.

Yes, Eve suffered troubled thoughts of her own. But not like these.

Where did these thoughts come from? I assumed everyone felt this way at times. Isn’t it part of being human? Perhaps our cottage unsettled others too — the melancholy in the scullery, the sadness of the spare bedroom, the longing by the rockery. I explained everything to growing pains. Most of all, Dad’s mental illness. His disturbing paintings of blood seemed proof that intrusive thoughts ran in families.

Between the ages of seven and ten, I slept in Mum’s bedroom while my own bed remained empty. I convinced myself that I had inherited something from Dad. My future seemed set. I’m just like him.

The Doctor Who Got the Wrong Diagnosis

By my eleventh year, my disturbed intrusive thoughts took on new and complex meanings. A figure strapped down like in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver’s Travels. I hated that story and I saw myself in that figure, held down by an unseen force, being used whilst unconscious.

Gulliver's Travels spurred intrusive thoughts of an unseen force restraining my body.

Mum took me to the doctors. What could he say? He assumed that my fears were not real — they were of the mind, common in children, and would fade as I grew older. My ‘routine’ night terrors are part of growing up.

Not real? Just of the mind?

No one had ever said that to me before! Profound relief washed over me. So, I can discard these vile thoughts as just imagination. With that, my fear of sleep eased. My dreams remained vivid and horrible, but they no longer held the same power. The doctor said not to take notice. The lights went off at night, and I returned to my own bed. Life settled.

The Birth of My Inner Twin

But a year later, something else began to materialise. My childhood terrors had found another form of expression. A man. A man in my head.

I continued to carry a murky mark on my being. It would shape my identity, my creativity, and my life. Twinhood gave me resilience. But it also caused confusion, for part of me has been split away. I have an inner twin. This part of me knows the truth behind my fears. She is the driving force behind the man in my head. She knows all about him. And the face on fire.

My identical twin could not protect me from what lay buried beneath my childhood intrusive thoughts, phobias and vivid fantasy world.

This blog is where I unravel those buried threads. My twin bond, intrusive thoughts, the hidden toddlerhood, and the journey toward truth.

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My odd behavior in Dad’s bedroom