Growing up and discovering who you are can be a challenge for many. Many children go through a period of time in which they are confused by their identity; and struggle to discover who they really are and want to be. This rite of passage can prove to be a difficult moment in a young person’s mind. In my experience, finding my identity was especially tricky, in the sense that I am an identical twin; meaning that my sister and I are the same age, height, and share the same face.
I didn’t really start to question my identity until I reached grade 7. Before that, I had just accepted that my sister and I came in a pair. We were a unit; what was one without the other? My sister and I were constantly referred to as “the twins” instead of our names, and when people did try calling us by our names, they mixed us up half of the time, but I never really minded. That was just the way that it was. Plus, I loved my sister; why should I care if people saw us as one person rather than two? How much did it really matter anyways?
When I reached the 7th grade, my opinion on this started to change. Being called by my sister’s name or referred to as “twin” became bothersome and annoying. I had been going to the same elementary school since jr. kindergarten, and still, the people I had grown up with couldn’t call me by the right name. I remember feeling like I was less than the other kids. They got to be their own individual person, while I only seemed to be half of a person. Who was I without my sister present? I wasn’t really sure.
After having this epiphany, I started to distance myself from my twin sister; from my best friend. This continued into highschool, where predictably, my identity dysphoria had gotten worse. Now there were so many new people in my life who had never met my sister and I before, therefore we were bound to be confused for one another and grouped together more often. Some of the teachers even encouraged this by refusing to call us by our names, but just “twins”. High School is where I started to discover the things that I really liked, the things that I didn’t, and how I responded to others. It gave me an opportunity to make my own friends who knew me as being me, as opposed to being one of the twins.
I excelled in English and French, while my sister excelled in math and science. She was sporty, while I wasn’t. I volunteered in school events while she didn’t. She was talkative, while I was quiet. I started to discover the differences between us and our individualities, and others started to see it too. I started to really see myself as me. This was a huge step in discovering my identity and gaining confidence in being me. I finally started to feel like a girl who has a twin sister, rather than a girl who is a twin.
Currently, my sister and I both study different things at the University of Windsor; both being worlds apart. I now feel comfortable and confident in being me, and even when people do group us together, it doesn’t bother me anymore. I know who I am, and no one can take that away from me.
I think one of the takeaways that I’ve learned in the discovery of my identity is not to base your self perception on how others perceive you. I had felt a member of a pair rather than an individual for years, because that’s how I was treated and talked to by others. When I realised who I was; my passions; my interests, my personality, my flaws, it didn’t really matter what others thought of me. I am happy to be me, and happy that I was born as an identical twin.