One Twin Remembers, the Other Doesn’t: Telling my Sister About Our Toddlerhood Trauma
Should I tell Eve — my identical twin — what I have remembered? In autumn 2016, a buried memory surfaced. I recalled seeing Mum’s brother in my bedroom rearing over me. He then did something despicable. Eve witnessed it. She was there too. For a few days, I carried knowledge she didn’t have. One twin knew something horrible; the other didn’t, just as I had for almost fifty years. This split between us mirrored a split within myself. I have an ‘inner twin’ — a divided self. Half of me knew something horrible; the other half lived in denial. Now the burden pressed heavily. Should I tell her? Would the truth destroy her? Or was silence another form of harm? Knowing Something My Identical Twin Doesn’t Fragments of toddlerhood continue to surface. I remembered a dark‑haired man pushing Eve and me across the recreation ground in our wide blue pushchair. Muggy clouds hung low. Trees whispered. He had taken us out. Where was he taking us? Another flicker‑memory: Eve and me in the bathroom...