Twins run in my family. So does addiction.

• My family has a ton of twins in it, and many have struggled with addiction.
• One of my twin sisters, Katy, died on December 2022.

Twins run in my family. So does addiction, and with addiction often comes death. I've seen a lot of twins in caskets. First, it was my uncle — I'll never forget how surreal it was seeing him lying there while my dad, his identical twin, sat beside me. A year later, my dad died from cancer. He'd told me when his brother got sick with cancer, he knew that he would be next — twin intuition. Though my dad didn't pass from addiction directly, past behavior can lie dormant, and cancer can grow quickly when you spent years of your life poisoning your body. It haunts the body just like it haunts families.

I also have twin sisters. One of them, Katy, a minute older than Robyn, died in December 2022. Though all died from various diseases, it was ultimately one they shared — that of addiction. This gene bypassed me, and I often wonder if not being a twin has something to do with it.

As my living sister, Robyn, and I stood in our sisters' funeral receiving line, I clasped her hand as long as she would let me. She's also cursed with our family's twin disease of addiction.

My twin sisters had issues with drugs

My mom claims I was so angry when I found out she was having twins I bopped her with a softball bat and refused to call them by separate names. They were both Katy-Robyn, and it took me a while to adjust to their existence.

They were feisty and self-assured — feeling uncool around them became commonplace as they grew older, yet there was a closeness between the three of us that has never dissipated. The drugs were the beginning of the wedge that separated us all.

At first, substances were woven in naturally — teenage experimentation of weed mixed with Victoria's Secret body spray and suntan lotion with sugary malt beverages stolen from the gas station. But like a fast-forward button, a few years turned into opiates and rehab stays, 12-step programs, relapses, and a wider wedge.

They somehow always took turns in their active use — one sober with the light back in their eyes while the other one MIA. I developed a love-hate relationship with A&E "Intervention," attended my own 12-step meetings and cried in a lot of stairwells on my lunch breaks.

We lived in fear of getting the dreaded phone call

Addiction is called a family disease. When you love someone who struggles with addiction, every breath is dependent on whether or not they're safe. We live in fear of that phone call.

Katy started using when she was 16 years old. The phone call I dreaded would come 17 years later. That's a lot of pain. I believe she really tried to beat it. My living sister certainly is.

It's lazy to see twins as the same. In the same way, it is to lump all addicts together as one. This was something I was working hard on before Katy passed — seeing them as separate from each other and separate from their addiction. My anger often clouded my empathy. Even in death now, I meditate on who Katy was, who she really was, beneath her addiction. That's what she deserves and what her son deserves as he grows up, so I can share the good memories of her.

I worry about my other twin sister

The week of Katy's funeral, old high school friends resurfaced with wild stories of their teen years — the crazy, fun-loving twins, they said. To them, safe in their adulthood with marriages and homes, this nostalgia was carefree. To me, it's a reminder of what Katy never got to have and how, even as kids, they were lumped together as one entity. They knew a version of her, but they didn't know all of her.

Now I worry about Robyn, having lost her twin — being the sole survivor in a lineage of twins struggling with addiction. This disease is fierce, unyielding, and life-long, just like love is.

I'll squeeze her hand tight as long as she'll let me. I can't begin to understand the complexities of losing your twin, but as sisters, we can stand in our pain and strength together. Work to see the nuances of people. We may never have the kind of secret language that twins have, but we have our own. We both lost our sister to addiction.