Six Months 🌻

I recently read a Harvard essay written by Abigail Mack about how she lost her mother to cancer. The motif of the essay was how she hated the letter ‘S’ because of the word ‘parents’ since she now only had one parent, and that one letter at the end was a constant reminder of her loss.

The essay struck a chord with me, because I realised that I too hate the letter ‘S.’ I, like Mack, have spent the last six months trying to run away from the letter S, with the justification that I am ‘living for her.’

I have come to realise that for the last six months I have been lying to just about everyone. I have steadfastly refused to talk about Ellen unless the conversation is positive. I have made a big show of ‘living’ and ‘moving on’ when actually, the wounds from Ellen’s loss are gaping, and only getting bigger the more I try to ignore them.

I moved to Uni exactly four weeks ago. I thought I liked the fresh start - the idea of no one knowing me, no one knowing my trauma, no one asking me questions about how I am with that familiar look of pity. But then the dreaded conversation topic comes up; siblings.

I still flounder when someone asks me how many siblings I have. That is my ‘letter S.’ Six months later I have no idea how to answer that awful question, because the answer has changed. I used to have two. Technically, I still have two. But only one is still around. So then, what do you say? There isn’t an instruction manual for when one of your siblings is dead.

The few times that I have dared to bring it up, another ‘s word’ comes around that I have grown to despise: ‘sorry.’ It makes me sick to my stomach every time someone apologises. I’m always quick to brush off their pity. I try hard not to hold it against them. After all, they are just following their own instruction manual. But they get the luxury of moving on with their days afterwards. I don’t. It’s hard not to be at least slightly bitter about that.

So, to save everyone around me from trying to figure out what to say, and to try and prevent those wounds from showing, I’ve tended to not bring it up. However, that has started to feel wrong. Selfish, even. How can I ‘honour Ellen’s legacy’ as I’ve always claimed I’ll do, when I cannot even bring myself to talk about her? How can I let people claim to know me when they don’t know about such a huge part of my identity?

I’ve decided I want that to change. I want to talk about it. I want to talk about the pain of the last six months, and the trauma leading up to it. I want to stop running away from the letter S.

It has been brought up by various people in my family that I have been the least ‘open’ about how I feel. It surprised me, because at first, that wasn’t a conscious decision I made. I didn’t go out of my way to isolate myself, or shut down, or refuse to let myself cry. I excused it at first as me having ‘things to do.’ I did my A-Levels two weeks after Ellen died. This wasn’t by choice - I wanted to defer, but my college made me do them. It was a blessing and a curse to have something to focus on. It was a blessing because I realised how strong I was, because I was actually very successful (I got B’s, by the way - I realised I never talked about that either). It was a curse because of… literally everything else.

People were surprised when I went back to college within two days of Ellen passing away. So was I. But it was the one piece of normality I had left. I realise now that I have been clinging desperately to any ‘normal’ I can get, at the cost of repressing my emotions. It was easier, I reasoned to myself, to ignore what was going on, to only talk about it when it was brought up. It meant I didn’t have to be vulnerable. It meant people wouldn’t get to pity me.

I think in that sense I need to swallow my pride. I need to stop being cynical about everyone around me and brushing off their offers of help because they ‘won’t get it.’ Because really, who does? Who on the planet has lost their twin sister three weeks before their eighteenth birthday? Who on the planet has had to watch their twin sister’s body slowly shut down? Who on the planet has been a child, and still spoken at their twin sister’s funeral, still smiled at well-wishers? Just because they don’t get it, doesn’t mean they don’t care.

I am starting to let people in. I am restarting therapy soon - I probably should have done that months ago, but again, pride. I was proud, to a sickening degree, of my choice to not address my emotions, to go on as usual. But that didn’t make me strong. It didn’t mean I was ‘moving on with my life’ or ‘healing’ or every other buzzword I’ve said over the last six months. Repression is not a strength, and it is completely unbecoming of the person Ellen was - Ellen experienced every single emotion, from joy to anger, with her heart on her sleeve. She felt everything openly and unapologetically. The best way to honour her memory is to do the same.

I have felt every emotion under the sun over the last six months, and to varying intensities. I have laughed lots and cried lots (but not enough). Most of all, though, I have felt lost.

I have lost my identity. I have lost my ‘fun fact’ icebreaker, because if I tell people that I’m a twin, I also have to tell them that she’s gone. I have lost Teddy Mountain, and the sound of Ellen’s laughter, and Fimbles repeating the same sentence over and over again. I have lost the blankets. I have lost various phones and TVs. I have lost the bond I cherished most in the world, because it was the thing I shared with Ellen that no one else did. I have lost the opportunity to see Ellen grow, for her to see me grow. I have lost birthdays and Christmases because they’ll never feel right, ever again.

I have lost Ellen. The best, most perfect person in the world. Six months later, I feel her loss as if it was still May.

I have spent the last six months letting my ego stop me from grieving. I have spent the last six months running away. I am going to spend the next six months doing what I should’ve been doing in the first instance - reflecting, holding myself accountable, and above all, talking. Not letting my fear of discomfort, for myself or others, stop me from saying how I feel. I hope that by doing this, I can start to ease the tangled mess of emotions that has situated itself inside my chest.

Welcome to this blog, which I created in the spur of the moment at 4am and I am starting to wonder whether was a mistake. My hope, is that it’ll give a bit more insight into the unique situation I am in, and my life beyond the pictures of my nights out which have taken over my social media. My other hope is that it’ll be a cause for reflection to anyone else dealing with grief - because ignoring everything is painfully easy. Maybe the world will be better off if we are all a bit more open.

Lots of love

Abbie xx