Womb-Mates, Wounds, and the Weight of Family

It makes sense now—why my stats stabilized when my twin sister Jessica was by my side, even while I was unconscious.

She was my very first human connection.

Before light.

Before language.

She was there.

Womb-mates for 9 months. Her presence has always meant something deeper, even when I didn't act like it.

I didn’t grow up easy.

If you knew me then, you know.

---

I was harsh.

Loud.

Judgmental.

I bulldozed my way through childhood like I was owed something, and everyone else was just... in the way.

My poor sisters, my parents—especially my dad—got the brunt of it.

I don’t know what mix of labels would explain it:

ADHD? Autism? BPD? Depression? OCD? Bipolar?

Maybe a cocktail of everything.

But back then, it didn’t matter. I was hard to love and harder to understand.

And I get now why you all walked carefully around me.

---

Then came the stroke.

And just like that, my role in the family shattered.

I wasn’t the loud one anymore.

Or the mean one.

Or the one that you came to to get things figured out or to get help.

I think that impacted me the most, I was voided for everything. It was nice in a way to not have to deal with everything but now I'm just left out of everything.

I was the fragile one. The broken one. I felt like a burden. The one people used tiptoe around, now felt like they had to tiptoe around everyone.

But inside, I felt everything more intensely than ever.

The guilt.

The grief.

The love I didn't know how to show before.

---

And then there’s my dad.

He came from Guatemala in his late twenties, into a completely different world.

Culture shock doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Now that I’m older, I see the weight he carried—not just as a father, but as a foreigner trying to make sense of a family full of wild hearts and emotional chaos.

And still, he stayed.

Even when none of us knew how to say the right thing.

---

I know I made growing up hard.

And I know it’s hard to trust I’ve changed.

But I’m not who I was.

The storm is still there—but now I’m learning how to steer.

If my family ever reads this:

I love you.

I’m sorry.

And I see you so much clearer now.

Thank you for staying—even when I made it damn near impossible.