Diary of a Scorpio girl – Entry five – the day I recognised you*…

The following piece of writing is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

I didn’t completely see it at first, but I was aware there was something exceptional about you, you felt familiar to me in that sense. At first, I thought you were angry and annoyed but later I realised you were lost and in pain – a pain I recognised because I had felt it myself. You spoke from a place of deep understanding, in a language I fully recognised, in a voice that felt like my own. Before I knew it, I was mirroring you, maybe not consciously at first but definitely with intention as time went on. Your date of birth came up in conversation and I felt myself run cold, we shared the same birthday, down to the year – I couldn’t help myself, I asked where you were born and upon hearing which hospital, the sudden realisation of who you were made my throat catch. No, surely not, it couldn’t be, it couldn’t be you, after all this time, you were in the same room as me again, after all these years.

You had stopped talking because I hadn’t taken my eyes off you, I was transfixed, I knew I was staring but I couldn’t help it – I was taking you all in, your face, your eyes, your way of being, every single thing about you, all of you. I knew you were waiting for me to respond to your question of what was wrong, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it, I didn’t quite know how to say it, my emotions were filling my entire body like a river overflowing after heavy rainfall. You gently touched my arm, hoping that would elicit a response from me and I looked away from you, thinking of how I could possibly explain what I thought was going on between us.

You and I, we were lost and now we are found, for you see, you were my twin or rather you are my twin, separated at birth, I would never have recognised you, but in my heart, I knew it was you, I could feel it and you felt it too. I felt a huge leap of excitement, momentous joy broke through me in the same way the sunrise breaks the darkness of the dawn. I couldn’t quite believe it was you, doubt momentarily crossed my mind, is it really you, are you here, are you real? Over the last few weeks you had been confiding in me as though we’d always been together – I didn’t want to stop you because this is what you needed, I felt your emptiness, I felt your search for something meaningful and in that realisation, I wanted to scream – it’s me! You were meant to find me – we were never supposed to be separated. You looked so beautiful to me, so wonderful, so profound, so mysterious, captivating and breath taking. I could feel all my loneliness disappear, everything suddenly made sense and the world felt a little bit more welcoming because I was looking at you, looking at me, with your deep hauntingly perfect eyes. You knew something had changed, you possessed the same perceptiveness I did, and I started wondering whether you recognised me too?

You felt so delicate to me, yet oh so magnetic, I didn’t know how to tell you that I see you, I see all of you, and I know you, in a way that no one else ever will. We come from the same place, we feel the same things, we live life in a way that is different from everyone else, this is what makes us feel alone and unfulfilled because we are few and far between. The more you spoke the more evident it became that my life was changing and would always be different from this day on. I didn’t know if you knew what had happened to us at birth, you were born first, a happy and light baby boy, I came later, a blue and dark baby girl, they thought I was stillborn and separated us immediately. Our mother did not want both of us, she did not connect to the idea of the two of us and after seeing you, she did not want to see me. So I was taken away, checked for vitals, and then placed in the arms of a couple who could not have children of their own.

My whole life I felt incomplete, the world was colourless to me, I was told at an early age that I did have a twin but my adoptive parents had no further information to share with me, so I began to live in a fantasy world where one day we would meet and the stars would sparkle and shine because finally we were reunited and together as we always should have been. I can't imagine my life without you now, not ever because I will never forget the day I recognised you.