Only Child Drew His 'Twin' as a Kid, Years Later Mom Revealed the Truth

A man looking back through an old kindergarten journal with his mom has described the moment they both froze upon finding a drawing with a significant meaning behind it.

The drawings and artwork children produce might make wonderful keepsakes for proud parents but these works also offer some insight into an individual's experience.

Writing in a 2011 study published in the journal Procedia, researchers Masoumeh Farokhi and Masoud Hashemi from Iran's Islamic Azad University said: "Through the process of observing and analyzing the drawings of young children, insights can be gained as to the social/emotional, physical, and intellectual development of each child.

"Children usually explore the world around them through intellectual, physical and emotional methods for young children; pencil, brush and paper are the best means of conveying their fondest hopes and most profound fears."

For AJ, 32, who is based in Virginia and asked not to be named in this story, those hopes and fears came back to the fore during a recent trip home to see his mom in California, which he outlined on Reddit.

"I visited my mom for the first time since I moved across the country six years ago," AJ, who grew up in California, told Newsweek. "She had just pulled everything out of my grandmother's storage unit because my grandma's mental capacity is diminishing and she wanted to take charge of the stuff in there before it's too late."

That was how he ended up coming across his old notebook from when he was in kindergarten.

"The notebook was near the bottom of one of a few boxes belonging to my mom that were stored there as well, so since I'm visiting we decided to open them up and look through them," AJ said.

"I found the notebook and was going through it with her, kinda just laughing at spelling mistakes and goofy drawings, then flipped a page and saw that one. It really stopped us both in our tracks."

It was a scribbled drawing underneath which AJ had written: "Today I sat with my brother."

There was just one problem.

"I was an only child," AJ said. "When I was little, I'd tell my parents about my twin brother."

"I remember feeling like there was someone missing from my life since I was a kid. I'm an artist so they assumed I had imaginary friends, until I started saying he was my brother and his name was Samuel."

AJ has memories of watching the animated series Rugrats and telling his mom he was a twin like the toddler characters Phil and Lil.

"My mom would always get kind of quiet or leave the room and my dad would seem bothered," AJ said. "They never really encouraged me to talk about it like they did with other silly things I'd say."

It was only when AJ reached the age of 15 that he learned the truth: he had been a twin.

"She miscarried him around 30 weeks but was able to keep me. We were fraternal twins, brothers," he said. "Since she never actually dispelled his body, doctors said that I likely 'ate' him, or absorbed him, which is apparently not uncommon in losses of one twin. I've been told it provides the nutrients needed for the other to grow."

AJ said his mom had encountered many difficulties in taking a baby to term.

"She'd had four miscarriages before this, so I'm the only one of her kids to survive," he said.

Yet when his mom told him the truth, AJ remembers a strange feeling coming over him.

"I didn't feel surprised or even sad. It was just sort of a fact of life, like, of course I had a twin. I knew that already," he said.

As he thought back, he recalled a strange sense growing up that he "wasn't alone in a room" and even remembers talking aloud to his "twin" at times.

"I'd somehow feel him talking back without words," he said.

Though that "communication" ceased as he grew up and now AJ admits he "doesn't really feel anything" that feeling of another presence still feels "normal" to him. Opening the notebook that day may have brought with it a surprise but for AJ it also offered something else, a chance to say "hello" to whatever once may have existed in his mind, body or otherwise.