My whole life has been a reflection in a sense. I have stepped side by side with someone my entire life, which is a very niche experience, but is one I wouldn’t trade for the world. I am an identical twin. I feel like sometimes I’m looked at differently than my peers (which I totally understand, I would stare too if I saw the same person twice), almost as if I’m no longer a singular human being. It’s a weird phenomenon, I know, but I am not the only twin that feels this way.
My sister is my best friend, point blank period. She is the person I turn to whenever I need anything, from inspiration to a tampon, she’s there. During our childhood we stuck together because we only had each other for a while. It was hard because people didn’t care to get to know me. Still to this day, I am seen as an entity instead of a person by some. We’re known as “the twins.” People in my life, whether that be someone I’ve just met or an uncle I’ve known since birth, have resigned to referring to my sister and I that way. They don’t care to attempt to tell us apart or know us individually. To them we are one. She is my other half, but I am my own person.
You know the look you give your friend that translates to, “we’re definitely going to talk about this later.” We don’t even have to look at each other, we just know. By sticking together for so long, we tend to think the same. There are times where I’ll tell my mom something without her in the room, and maybe two to three hours later, she’ll say the same thing. It’s wild and may be twin telepathy in a sense. She is my best friend and favorite person on this earth. She understand me on a molecular level that no one else ever will. She’s my person.
Identity
I’ve struggled with identity issues since I was young, and I didn’t know what they stemmed from until high school. I wanted people to like me, me as in myself, not my sister and me as a package deal. Only a few people really saw me as my own person. We had a lot of the same interests and were in the same classes 90% of the time, which didn’t help with separating the two of us. People did not care to get to know the two of us, so they got to know neither of us. That lead to us sticking together and being each other’s only friends. But there are so many experiences I’ve had that I could not have done without her. She’s there to keep me sane.
I’ve had so many awards, accomplishments, parties, gifts, and anything that can be combined, was combined. Because there are two of us, people, especially adults, who find it okay to just think of us as one entity, so they reward us that way, even if we both put in the work separately and accomplish things on our own. Being in the arts, I was double-cast more times than I can count because it was just easier for them. I am a person, not a convenience.
There’s also the constant comparison. I was the dumb twin, the fat twin, the ugly twin, the mean twin, as well as the smart twin, the good twin, the skinny twin, and the pretty twin. I’ve always been on one end of the scale and my sister on the other. It’s so hard to not be the favorite when your own blood is. We’ve always been neck and neck with academics and accomplishments, so the comparisons were slim, but it was still always there. Now we are both at the University of Connecticut, both doing amazing things in our separate majors. The comparison fades away somehow. But the younger me felt small and useless because I wasn’t the “good twin.”
The stigma
There’s also the gross part of being a twin. It’s heavily fetishized without it being even taboo. I have been asked to be in threesomes so many times because it’s so normalized in our media. People have made it okay to ask me very personal questions about my sex and love life like it’s something you say to someone every day. I was at the dentist, and I had a new hygienist. Once I told her I was a twin, she switched on the little TV and forced me to watch Extreme Sisters, specifically the segments about a) twins dating the same guy, and b) identical twins who married identical twins. What makes it worse is that they had babies too, so the babies are technically brother and sister. It makes me so uncomfortable, but the stigma is so untouched, so I get comments and questions about it all the time. It has even happened to me in professional work environments by people well beyond my senior, which is nuts. It’s what I coined as the term “twin-cest.”
I’ve also encountered the idea that people don’t think we talk to each other. They’ll talk badly about my sister to me as if I won’t tell her. But there’s another side to this when it comes to people. People will ask out one of us, and if we say no, they’ll ask the other twin. This is what I’ve called “twin hopping.” The fact that people think it’s fine to do that as if they’re going to date the same person is beyond me. We are two different people with two completely different personalities, preferences, and interests when it comes to guys.
Conclusion
As I said before, this is a weird set of issues to have, but they really aren’t talked about. I wanted to share some of the experiences I’ve had to sort of shine a light on how some things make me feel. I think the main thing for me is that I am me, not an entity. I’m not to be picked and prodded at like a social experiment. Lastly, I’m never offended if you don’t know which is which. Just ask. I know we’re identical, I can open her phone with my face and get through customs with hers. It’s no biggie!