Should I feel guilty?
In hindsight it's both understandable but also weird that I have never really considered this thought. Yet maybe it's simply because at this point the present no longer urgently requires my full attention, allowing other, maybe less relevant details to demand attention.
In the end what it comes down to is that because I exist, one other life now doesn't exist. Worse, that life never even had a chance to be born or grow up.
Or maybe it did.
As far as I am aware at this point, I carry inside of me the cells of what used to be two zygotes. Two new lives in development, until they merged into a single zygote which became an embryo, which became me. My twin sister. My twin brother. Now just... me.
Am I those two lives, merged? Should I feel bad that my twin sibling simply isn't there because their cells got merged into mine? Yet can I even refer to myself without it including both entities?
It felt curious to think about all of this when the thought suddenly hit me yesterday, especially in the sense of what it means to exist.
Does it matter that these two zygotes, these clumps of cells merged to become me? They were just cells, after all. Not conscious, thinking beings. I shouldn't have to feel bad about what happened, yet I do. Mostly when I think about what could have been.
Imagining a different life where a regular girl was born, with a twin brother, to both live their lives probably without any major troubles. Probably happier lives than the life I have lived so far.
As I slowly come to grips with what it means to be a hermaphrodite, I very much doubt that this will be the last issue I'll have to settle for myself. Even ignoring the countless traumas and other experiences of the past decades, there seem to be a lot of things and concepts which I have to learn in order to be myself, yet which are practically alien to those around me.
I still have a long road ahead of me, a road of which I am not certain it will lead me closer to or further away from society as a whole. Nevertheless it's a road which I must walk to the end, if I wish to learn to understand and accept.
If only I didn't feel so completely alone.
Maya
3 comments:
Yet if you accept your merging you never are, never can be alone, your twin did not end but is you.
Though this brings duality of form, and conflict in your pysical self which you still battle, it can also bring strength and endurance surely beyond what either twin could have been?
Can you see yourself not as an incomplete one, but the sum of two?
Maya, have you ever heard of the native american concept of two spirit people? Two spirit is a self identification that could be chosen by someone whose gender was not in sync with physical traits or gender norms and often individuals would chose parts of both rather than one gender. Two spirit people were accepted and had families and so on, but on their own terms mixing things to their liking. Since you are two bodies in one and have your own unique walk through life, I would think that you might find some perspectives in this concept that could add to your life.
@Rich - the sum of two would fit better, yes. I'm not less, but more because of what I am.
@RW - yes, I have heard of this concept among native American people. I figure I should maybe look into it some time soon :)
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