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How Personifying My Pain as an 'Evil Twin' Helps Me Cope

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In my mind, every time something goes wrong in my body I always personify that ailment, organ or body system.

I’ll find myself trying to rationalize with my body, symptom, or disease as if we are two separate individuals.

Better put – maybe more like an internal twin.

This little trick helps me to separate myself from my diseases because that is not who I am.

My diseases are what I have, not who I am. The symptoms of my diseases are also not my character traits. I am not my disease.

I am, of course, the good twin. By the end of this, you will agree with me. I can promise you that without a doubt.

I’m not someone to go out of my way or purposefully hurt anyone. I absolutely love to make people laugh and comfort them during struggles. I’m one of those annoying friends that will always call or text to check on you and you’d never doubt if I have love for you. Bless your heart if you have kids and I love you and them, because I will spoil those babies rotten with not one ounce of guilt. It takes a lot to make me angry and I’m always up for an adventure. This is the real me.

The other one. Let’s call her, Lymertha. She’s the personified version of all of my diseases, conditions and symptoms all rolled into one.

Lymertha, as you can tell even from her name, doesn’t play very nicely with others. Short-tempered, anxious, paranoid and rude. She’s very use to having things her own way and will raise hell with the slightest change or stress. She’s been known to be able of destroying entire immune systems of her host or hostess in a matter of days! That tells you right there that she just does not care about anything. The nerve…No, the audacity to come in as a guest and wreak havoc like she does is down right appalling!

The only time she leaves is just to prank me. She will hide out in my bones and tissues. I won’t hear her as loudly for a few hours or maybe even a day and then bam! Out of nowhere she’s back! And creepily singing, “One…two… Lymertha is coming for you,” as she takes a sledgehammer to my stomach. Whack! Whack!

“Three…four…now you’re on the floor.”

Whack! Whack! Whack!

I’ve asked what I have done wrong. She won’t tell me. I’ve apologized and sent her flowers. I even wrote a card to go with the flowers:

“Dear Lymertha, I’m not sure what I’ve done, but if you would, please forgive me and stop breaking things. Especially anything that is on the inside…Because that is much more expensive and harder to fix.”

She still hasn’t answered or told me what I’ve done wrong. She just continues to hack away at my bones and sets all the nerves throughout my body on fire while I’m screaming, “You’re why we can’t have nice things!” as I attempt to dodge the shrapnel flying around and put out the flames.

She yells back, “You’re not my real host!”

Then she goes storming off to continue her epic temper tantrum over in my leg muscles. With a pickaxe in her hands, she raises it above her head; I hold my breath and brace for impact. The whole time, Lymertha is still singing, “Seven…eight…now you’ll be up real late.”

This is clearly an extremely toxic relationship. I just can’t seem to find the right moment to take off running full speed into the woods to stumble upon some magical doorway into another world.

Hey, don’t laugh. It could happen. There have been thousands of books written with that exact theme. And when I find it, you’ll want to come along too. So, I wouldn’t chuckle too deeply.

Getty Image by Electra-K-Vasileiadou

Originally published: October 11, 2018
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