Double Take
“So, you guys are identical?”
“Yes.”
“You look nothing alike though.”
“I know.”
“So, you guys are fraternal then.”
“No. Based on the pregnancy, we’re identical. We split from the same egg. You know what you learn about in biology?”
“You’re fraternal.”
“Okay.”
This conversation is one I’ve endured too many times to count. Yes, I am an identical twin. No, we look nothing alike. Yes, I’m aware that implies we are fraternal. No, I promise I’m not delusional and think we look otherwise.
In my elementary school, there were a few pairs of twins, some of whom were identical as well. Yet, it seemed that they fit the ticket better than my sister and I. The same faces, down to teeth placement in smiles and bone structure. Eerily similar fashion sense (to be fair, for girls in grade school, we all stuck to a strict couture diet of sparkly apparel from Justice and horridly vivid Züca backpacks--simpler times). We were the reigning “fake identical twins.”
I enjoy seeing my parents silently gloat when others express dry sympathy for having twins. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” my dad always assures the third party.
Besides making icebreakers easier (I mean, who can beat “I have a twin sister” in Two Truths and a Lie when it turns out to not be false?), being a twin has taught me a lot about the art of compassion and the turbulence of self-discovery. I was brought into the world, trailing my sister's coattails by 60 seconds, a fact that is still held over my head to this day. In my world, I was met with matching onesies (differing only by their hues) and shared birthday cakes. Identical activities schedules, right down to our recreational soccer teams and Girl Scout troops, not only was convenient to our mother, who sacrificed her time and energy on managing two rascals and buckling them into a white Toyota Sequoia, but also lent itself to sharing similar life experiences. We had the same ardent 7th grade math teacher. Same love interest at the age of six. Same goofy and cautious parents, same didactic and caring older sister, same ceiling plastered with glow-in-the-dark star sticks that we fell asleep looking at every night in elementary school when we shared a bunk bed.
Up until it wasn’t the same. In middle school, faced with our first “real life” decisions, namely choosing what electives to take, she took ASB, while I stayed in my English teacher’s classroom at lunch to help grade reading quizzes. We both played volleyball at this time, her moving to prevent each ball from touching the floor with great elegance, while I stood at the net, clumsy and throwing my arms up to block the other team’s hits. As years wore on, and a copious amount of knee pads wore thin with use, she moved up on the teams and I remained stagnant on the lower ones, content with my less demanding practice schedule. It meant I had more time to read.
It wasn’t until my freshman year that I simply realized I didn’t enjoy the sport anymore. Standing tall at the net, numb with anxiety of looming homework and tests and a taller opponent who bore her eyes into me, didn’t fill me with the same exuberance as it once did. Maybe it was because I wasn’t on the court with my sister anymore; without my twin flame, quite literally, the activity had become dull. I found greater joy in watching her excel on her team, sinking hits into the upper corners of the court, an impossible spot for liberos, and smiling widely after acing another serve. It made me ache to find what brought the same expression onto my face.
It took me several years to realize that being an athlete just wasn’t for me, partly because it differed from what my sister was doing, partly because I didn’t know how to approach finding my passion. Although we grew up in the same environment, we developed starkly different countenances and interests and dispositions. Constantly having a built-in friend lent itself to taking more time for me to break from the “twin auto-pilot” and focus on what really made me happy. I quit the sport, focused on my academics, created a book club, joined my school’s publication, wrote scripts and prose in any free moment I had, and joined a humanities conservatory, studying a myriad of topics spanning philosophy to ethics. I found my own people. She did the same and eventually outgrew the sport, instead chasing entrepreneurial and philanthropic pursuits. Despite it all, we still existed in the same space, looking forward to recounting our days to each other every night.
At the end of the day, it’s our differences that somehow draw us closer together. We share different perspectives on our lives and have knowledge spanning diverse fields. We look forward to coming into each other’s room and (not so sneakily) stealing each other’s favorite sweater. We know what the other one is thinking without having to articulate it (yes, twin telepathy is real in our case). We take each other on long, long drives on the 101, turning the volume knob until SZA’s songs break the sound barrier. She constantly challenges me to be a better person and to see things in a new light, while forcing me to break out of my shell every once in a while.
Being a twin made the road to developing my identity windy, but in a wonderfully safe way. It’s hard to have strong regrets about certain areas of my life when my sister was next to me through it all. Sometimes, however, it’s odd to see myself in an alternate reality--that version of me lives right down the hall. One thing is for sure: I agree with my father’s response to having twins. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I don’t want to know what life would be like without my biological best friend.