My twin sister was ʙᴇᴀᴛᴇɴ every day by her ᴀʙᴜsɪᴠᴇ husband. So we switched identities… and made him regret everything.

For ten years I lived inside Silver Pines Psychiatric Center in Riverside, Arizona, while Jenna spent those same years trying to hold together a life that kept falling apart in her hands.

Doctors labeled me with complicated terms about impulse control and emotional instability, but I always understood it in a simpler way because I felt everything too strongly and too fast for the world around me.

Happiness burned through my chest, anger blurred my vision, and fear made my hands shake like something inside me was ready to break loose at any moment.

That same intensity is what sent me away when I was sixteen years old, after I saw a boy drag Jenna behind our high school and I reacted without thinking about consequences or limits.

I remember the sound of something breaking, the shouting, and the shocked faces around me, but nobody focused on what he had done to her because they were all staring at me like I was the real danger.

Our parents were afraid, the town was afraid, and when fear takes control, people stop caring about fairness and start protecting themselves instead.