've got an idea I said. I look around the room. My sister is in a heap. Her eyes are wide. Her bag is unpacked. I am lazing on the large armchair looking at the quasi-hotel room disdainfully. They're going to lock her up, my dear twin sister, with whom I am very very close. And yet we fight a lot.
It was her choice to come but I don't think she wants what they're going to do to her. I certainly wouldn't want it. They have made some promises. They've said they could help, bring her back to reality. Some sh*t like that, doctors, brochures, fact sheets, machines that go beed beep beep, nice nurses.
But she's tried is this, different cities, different decor, different food. They all have nice herbal tea, art class where you make a collage at some point to express yourself. Yoga and beach walks. Gemima, I explain, this doesn't work for us. You tried this. Let it go. Let's go.
I don't know why she keeps trying. She lets me take charge for a bit, we sail through some dramatic and cavernous lands that nether of us remember and then she winds back in these places where they drug her for a week and then tell her to do all this hard work, all alone. Without me there to comfort her, take her on little excursions of my making… the realisation. How horrid,
The return, afterwards. Does she remember? The cold and frosty receptions she will receive because of something I have done. The days I showed up to her last job and thought the place could go f*ck itself, did some half assed work until she arrived at 3pm and got into it. The parties I went to and behaved badly at. The things of hers I lost. All the times I f*cked her boyfriend while she was in a blackout and he probably knew. The conversations I had with people, them thinking I was her, that she later had to bluff her way through.
Why would she want to stay in this place and go through what they are suggesting. Showing up again is going to be excruciating. I have made my mark.
She has become weak and I control her, my choices are our choices these days. She is closer to me than anyone or anything. We don't need a god, I am in charge.
"We don't have to stay" I whisper in her ear. "We can be gone by tonight. Look, I've found flights. to Ethiopia. You said you wanted to go there yesterday."
"But we have nothing there" she says. "We'd have nothing to come back to."
"There is LOADS there. And what do you want to come back to? I don't particularly want to come back to this place. Or any of the other places. Lets go forward" I emplore, cajole. "No plan. One way tickets and a bunch of cash." I flip my hair, whimsically, walk around the room, try to unlock the windows. I pull a couple of petals off the bright sunset coloured roses that were sent just that morning. She is in tears. Her hair is bundled in a tanged ponytail and her face is blotchy and stained. She looks unwell, awful, her eyes are red and she is bruised, covered in bandages. I think she fell off something or through something. She is weak. This is ridiculous, I will need to decide what's best for us.
"But what about mum and everyone?" she says, crying.
"She's probably expecting it. Everyone is. Everyone will gather around and support her, she'll get through it."
"She would never rest not knowing where we landed up, not coming back. And what about Jason?"
"You are a blip. a year. You are nothing. You will be a sad story."
"Thats not fair."
Sometimes one of us writes a letter, a note, a story and Im not sure which one. I am her twin, after all. The boundaries between us are sometimes strong, sometimes permeable. I am really well liked at the start. You are left cleaning up the mess at the end and you are weaker than me, you don't carry my anger. Its anger that lets me be reckless and brave and impulsive. I ford myself the luxury to say what i want and hurt others and you will pay for it all.
Let go, give up and come with me. It all gets too much for you and you come to these places, away from the places I take you. Sometimes I can distract you and stop you getting there with a bit of my analgesic reassurance and black magic. I know the chinks in your armour, how to find the malleable bits. It gets easier over time , when you are run down and I think you have almost lost the ability to fight with me.
Although you wouldn't come with me that afternoon so I had to stay too. We'll see if you can be the leader for a while. I'll sit and watch with you, see the stupid doctor, write rude notes about smurfs allover your breakfast order. I am angry that you have brought us here where they will want to put us to sleep, me permanently.
But I will always be there. I will always be your twin and you will always have to live with me. You will have to stay strong you will really have to exercise, you will have to return to your god and your spirituality if you want to be the decision maker. Im cunning, baffling and powerful. And I want to destroy us in a big colourful bang. Or a lonely dark hospital. I will always be right next to you, inside you, if not leading us again. If you get it, and it seems you want it, know that it is UP TO YOU to keep the power, because I will never go away I might only rest for a bit.
