Living Us

She’s been with me all my life, but no one believed me. Until now.

When I was little, my parents thought I was crazy. For a while they thought it was cute, having an imaginary friend. I insisted that she was real, that I could hear her voice, clear as my own. She didn’t have a name, so I named her Hannah. She was my best friend.

They stopped thinking it was cute as I got older. They made me see a doctor. I didn’t like him, and I didn’t like the way the drugs they gave me made me feel. Neither did Hannah. So I lied. I told them I couldn’t hear her anymore.

I always had a little bit of a paunch growing up. My belly would flutter and tickle and make me giggle. It felt strange, but good. I asked Hannah where she was. She said she lived someplace dark and damp, but it was warm and comfortable, and she could hear this constant thump- thump. She could hear my voice when I talked to other people, but it sounded different than it sounded in her head, like I was underwater. She liked hearing my voice and she liked hearing the thump-thump. It made her feel safe.

I got older. So did Hannah. She couldn’t see them, she couldn’t see anything, but she could feel them on her chest, growing above the long cord that was attached to her belly. my belly kept on getting bigger. The fluttering was stronger too, and I could feel something pressing against my skin from the inside sometimes. I asked Hannah about it. 

That’s when we figured it out. When she stretched out her arms and legs, I’d feel it, the pressure in my belly. Hannah lived inside me. I told her I was glad, that she was my best friend, that I loved her more than anyone. She told me that she loved me too. I wanted us to be together forever.

Mom took me to the doctor again. She demanded to know who did this to me. I didn’t know what she was talking about. She told me I was pregnant. That made sense. But, I didn’t tell her about Hannah, because I didn’t want her to think I was crazy and I didn’t want to take the pills again.

She took me to get an ultrasound. The jelly felt weird, and Hannah said she heard a weird noise when the technician put the stick on my belly. She freaked out when she saw Hannah, probably because she didn’t look like a regular baby. She looked like me, like a regular fourteen-year-old girl, only tiny.

They called it “fetus in fetu” syndrome. Hannah was my twin sister, but instead of growing inside my mother, she wound up in my womb instead. I’d been pregnant my whole life, only no one knew it until now because she was so small. No one knew why she was so small, she just was.

The doctors wanted to terminate my pregnancy. I refused. I loved Hannah more than anything, more than life itself, and I would sooner die than let them take her away from me. Mom took me home, and she asked me about Hannah for the first time in years. Hannah knew everything I did. I asked her if she wanted to talk to Mom. Hannah told me that I was her real mom. I started to cry, but I wasn’t sad.

We continued to grow together. By the time I was eighteen, I looked like I was pregnant with twins. It was a little uncomfortable sometimes, especially when Hannah stretched or kicked, but I didn’t mind. I got regular ultrasounds to monitor my condition. She was still my miniature doppelganger in every way, save for her flat stomach and the umbilical cord connected to it. She is so beautiful. She’s my best friend, my sister, my daughter, my soul mate. I love her so much, in every possible way.

We learned how to be intimate. I’d touch myself, and she’d feel it. She’d touch herself, and I’d feel it. She’d touch me, and we’d both feel it. This is how we made love, and we did so as often as possible. We never thought for a moment was wrong. Sure, we were related, the same in so many ways, but we were also different. Special.

As we got older, our connection grew stronger. When I closed my eyes, I could feel myself surrounded by the warm inviting flesh of my own womb. When Hannah closed her eyes, she could see the world through mine.

My doctors keep asking to induce me, but neither of us want that. As big as I am now, I’ve never even felt a single contraction. As much as I would hate for her to leave me, to be alone and empty, I’d give birth to her if she asked me to. I asked her if that was what she wanted. She told me I already knew the answer. Not now, not ever.

We share dreams sometimes. Face to face, like looking in the mirror, twins, lovers, unsure where one of us begin and the other ends. Some we make love in our womb, blind, enraptured in sensation, certain that there is nothing that separates us.

We’re both grown women now, more or less. Hannah leaves me swollen and heavy, a perpetual fertility goddess. I can feel her every movement, every time she shifts and twists inside me, every time she laughs, every time she brushes the walls of my womb with a loving caress.

I know we’ll be together for the rest of our lives. I don’t know how long that will be, how long I can sustain this bizarre pregnancy until my body gives out. But I am known and wanted and loved in a way no woman ever was before. 

Together, we are complete.