Ask the Ring!

When Gandalf the Grey tried to find out if the ring Bilbo the Hobbit won from Gollum was The One Ring, he thought of asking Saruman the White, who was mighty in ringlore, went to Minas Tirith to study the old scriptures written down by Isildur and went to great trouble to find Gollum himself, who had had the ring longer than anyone else. He also talked to Bilbo and Frodo who consequently were involved in a splendid and rather frightening adventure told at length in the masterpiece The Lord of the Rings by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.

You see, I have read the book. Long before there ever was DREAM of a movie.
Und
But in the end Gandalf got his proof from the only source utterly reliable - the ring itself.
Put into the small hearthfire at Bag End on a sunny April afternoon the ring itself showed the fiery letters which revealed it to be The One Ring.

My twinship is very similar to the One Ring, made by Sauron, the original He-who-must-not-be-named. One Ring to rule all my waking moment, One Ring to find me everywhere, One Ring to bring everything I feel and do and say back to the topic of twinship and bind me in the darkness of losing my twin. In the land of twinloss where the shadows lie.m

And like Gandalf I went to and fro asking people I thought would know if they knew my feeling that I was a twin was true. Is this the One Ring that rules and finds and brings and binds me? Twinloss? Is it real? Is it true? Who was my Twin? Brother or sister? Who am I?
I studied the twinlore masters. Books and articles. Doctors and psychologists. Charles Bocklage, Alessandra Piontelli, Caryl Denis, Nancy Segal, Althea Hayton, Joan Woodward...
I dug into scriptures, on paper and in bits and bites, and I hunted down many a Gollum to crystalgaze for me. Am I a twin? Did I have a sister or a brother? When did they die?
I talked to those who had lived with me for decades, my mother, my aunt, my father - what did they remember from my childhood? Did I ever talk about having a twin?

In the end, like Gandalf, I despaired. And then, like Gandalf, I thought of something which might tell me the truth. Who was present when my twin (possibly) lived and died? Just one person. I myself.
My body was there, in the womb,when the One Ring that was to bind me, was forged: the loss of my twin. And my body tells the story when I take the time to listen to it, put t back into the fire of remembrance. Parts of my brain who are shoved aside by my thoughts and actions since I started to think consciously, have carefully stored EVERYTHING that happened, and they'll tell the tale, if I'm ready to listen.

Why do I panic when I get caught somewhere? My sleeve on a door know, my fingers when hanging up the washing? Why does my amygdala (not a Star Wars princess but a very ancient part of my brain) fire a Red Alert ever time that happens?
Why do I shrink away from touch? Why did I recoil from being touched as a toddler? Is the High Functioning Autism that runs in my paternal family (and which was not confirmed by a specialist) the only reason for that behaviour? Why did I scream, and flail my arms when I touched some mud or algae floating in the water on the lakeside as a kid?
Why do I fall apart when something goes missing? A pen, my keys, my cellphone?
Why do I always reach out inwardly to something, someone without ever being able to even describe what or who it is I am seeking?
Why do I always want to follow someone and never succeed in doing it in reality? Why do I complain of being alone and of being haunted by people at the same time?

I might just be off my rocker, of course.
On the other hand, I have always been able to run my family, cope with reality, take over responsibility, act responsibly. I'm not instable, depressed or psychotic. No therapist has ever been able to put a tag on me. I don't fit into their agendas.
I don't fit into any agenda, not even my own.
If you have tried every other explanation but one, the one left might be the one which fits.

The ring I am wearing is the One Ring, the ring of twinloss.
My body remembers being caught in my twin's umbilical cord, when she sank down to the bottom of the womb after her heart stopped...
My body remembers touching her mazerating body, her skin coming off in flakes, her intestines disolving...
My brain remembers getting no response like I used to when reaching out to her...
My body and brain, my whole existence remembers being two, being t(w)ogether, being connected to someone. Not anyone, not just someone, not a friend, a spouse, an idol, a leader, a what-ever, but my twin, and no-one can fill that space. I want, I NEED to follow someone, but not anyone.

When I stop trying to reconstruct my twinship by giving my twin a name, a face, a symbol of memory, when I stop trying to handle the whole subject of early twinloss with my frontal cortex and listen to the older parts of my brain, as old as the One Ring forged by the smiths of Eregion in the beginning of all time, my time, my body, my being the Ring itself, tells if is it the One.