When there is no proof...

I have no medical proof of my twinship.
There is one person who keeps coming back to question me. Are you sure you're not making this up? To have a handy explanation for being different? To make up for your lack of social interaction? To seek attention? To produce the feeling that you're special, somehow?
I am that person. Everytime I post in the Facebook group for twinless twins or upload a posting here on this blog, part of me feels like a fraud. I am making it up. Maybe I'm not a twin at all.

True, there are all the problems my mother had during pregnancy. There is my aunt saying "It's two in there" because the commotion inside was visible from outside. There is the fact my mother was hospitalised and when she left the hospital her cervix was partially open. There was the midwife saying the placenta was so huge "it could have held two".

And there is me with all the symptoms all the questionnaires ever done on prenatal twinloss can come up with. There are weird physical sensations, dreams, PTSD which can't be traced to any event in post-natal life and a water colour drawing I did ate age 4, long before I had even heard of twinloss before birth. Long before anyone in my neck of the wood had heard of it.

But still - there is no proof.

I talked to my mother, but it's so long ago she mixes up dates (and pregnancies, I have two younger siblings living). I talked to psychics, but if I'm not a fraud, they certainly were, the ones I met. They didn't even get the facts right I could easily check.

The only proof I will ever have is the same a person has who is faced with two boxes. Two identical boxes, wooden or cardboard. They are sealed, they look the same and the person is alone with them in the desert. Nobody near to ask or bear testimony.

When I pick the boxes up, one after the other, one of them is clearly heavier than the other. There is something inside.
I can feel the weight. I have no scales near to prove the difference in weight. Other people can't lift the boxes, they are meant for me alone, they are MY life. Only I can feel the difference in weight.
When I put them back on the ground again they look exactly the same.
I shift their positions, I try to distract myself. They look alike. There can't possibly any difference between them.
I pick them up again.
One is still heavier than the other.
They still look alike.
There is still no outward sign I can show to others to prove the boxes are different.
Only I can feel it, I am aware of the difference. One is filled, the other is empty.
That's all the proof I'll ever get.