T.
This interview has been condensed and edited. All references to specific names have been removed and/or replaced with a 1-second sound gap.
Rachel: Can you just tell me a little bit about your childhood, what it was like growing up in your family?
T: Totally. It was intense scrutiny, I would say. My mother had really, really wanted children. She waited a long time to have kids. She had us when she was 38, and took a fertility drug in order to get pregnant, so when we were born, there was a lot of like enthusiasm and thrill and excitement. And also an inordinate amount of attention, I think, paid to both me and my sister.
It was just us, just the two of us. We don't have any other siblings. And so I think there was so much, like love and nurturing and excitement and then a lot of fear, sort of all wrapped up in our, in our twinship and in our relationship. But it was very like, classic sort of upper middle class, suburban, child rearing. My mother had an idea of what she wanted a family to look like. And it was just the four of us, my father, and me and my sister and my mother.
And I think there were a lot of really like, happy blissful years. And then there was also a lot of intensity put on me and my sister, because it was just us. And because we were twins, we were really thought of as the twins. And so we were always being compared. And we were always in reference to the other, I guess. I weirdly don't remember a lot about my childhood. My sister has such a, like, crystalline memory. Like you know, she can reference things from the time she was like four or something. Has like vivid, evocative memories. And I—it's sort of all a wash. It's entirely hazy. I can picture the physical spaces we inhabited, but less of the day-to-day.
The schooling stuff is sort of interesting. We went to the same school until we were in sixth grade. And then my sister was taken out of the public schooling system and she went, ended up going to a Quaker school, and that was like the first time that we, yeah, we were in like entirely different environments. And I think that there had been some sort of tsuris and, I guess general, sort of young animosity between us before then in like social dynamics in elementary school. And so, that was sort of my first feeling of like, um, in—, like aloneness I guess. And, like having people not know that I was a twin.
Rachel: You say you don't have a very clear memory of being young.
T: Yeah.
Rachel: But it sounds like you have a general sense of the way things were before you split into your more separate worlds in sixth grade, which I wanna talk about in a minute. Can you remember the sensation or the feelings that you had with each other when you were growing up? Like, did you play together? Did you share a room? Were you kind of close in that way? What are those sensory memories that you have of that time?
T: I wish I had more. I feel like somehow they've, any that I might have had, have been supplanted by, sort of like visual representations of our childhood, like old home movies that I've watched of us like cocooned next to each other in the crib. We did share a room, until we were also actually in sixth grade, I believe. So that was clearly a year of splitting. But we definitely played together. We danced together a lot. I think one distinct memory that I have is we would take a lot of baths together and like, kick up the foam and it was sort of this pure joyous, moment of, of play, I guess. We have a lot of home videos of us just being so goofy and silly in the bath. Yeah. And then I, I do have a feeling of like the coziness after the bath, of like the threadbare towel, but then being so warm in it, and then we would be swaddled in our pajamas and then we would be in our sort of two little twin beds.
We each had, we had these twin beds that were each against one of the walls of this small little room with this hideous green shag carpet. And that eventually became my room. And my parents would read to us. And so we would just sort of both be cozy in our own little beds. and that, that feels somewhat tangible to me.
But I don't have a lot of very, like corporeal or physically oriented memories of twinship specifically. I felt like we were always inhabiting different spaces. We always had different modes, I think. There was, I mean, there was a massive gap between us, in birth. Like I was born 17 minutes before her, which I feel like, I don't know, my family can—not that they imbue it with significance, but there's a whole, there's all this sort of storytelling around and mythmaking around our birth story.
And I do feel like it is, you know, am I ascribing meaning to it because I've been told my entire life that it is meaningful? Maybe, but it does feel in a certain way evocative of our initial differences.
Rachel: Can you say more about why that is, what those differences are and what that myth is?
T: Yeah. Well the story was like, I mean, you know, there's twin A and twin B. And, my mother was, you know, hellbent on having a natural birth. It was something she really wanted to experience. And, and she went in for a checkup, sort of late in the game and we were both breach, which meant that she was gonna have to have a c-section. And she sort of hoped and prayed that one of us would flip. And I was Twin A because I was lower down in the birth, in the birth… cavity? What, whatever, the bir—I wish I knew better. But, yeah, so she was sort of wishing for that and, and lo and behold, I flipped.
And so she was sort of grateful to me even before I was born. And there's this, all this sort of storytelling about how I came out, like I sort of tumbled out, head first. You know, like vigorous cry. And then my sister had to be pulled out by her feet and she was breach and as if she didn't really, she wasn't quite ready for the world. But she'd been pulled out alongside me, because I had sort of set the tone of like, I'm ready, here I come.
And so, there was a lot of storytelling about how my sister was, looked sort of like a preemie. She had a sort of like an underbaked look to her, and I, though I was only, you know, like a pound or so heavier than her, I looked ready. And so there was this very, there was very much this difference, this like physical difference between us from the beginning. And then I think, there was also temperamental difference. And so it was very easy for my parents to compare and contrast
Rachel: How were those comparisons made known to you?
T: Um, well I was sort of boisterous and I think more generally gregarious as a kid and like socially-oriented. And my sister was always a little bit quieter. She had some, like learning sort of like slowness, and, so I think that there was always sort of explanation of how, like we weren't the same and just because we were twins, it didn't mean that we were gonna wanna do the same things or act the same way around other people.
I think it's hard for me now to really think about how that was explicitly told to me when I was young because it's, because so much of it happened later on in, again, this sort of storytelling of well you walked so much more quickly than your sister. I have read my mother's diaries from the time we were like zero to five. And there's a lot of, like T_____ was sort of greeting the world and J_____ was sort of the shrinking violet. And that was like, you know, narrativizing that my mother was doing, right?
Rachel: So it doesn't sound like there was any kind of expectation of sameness or something that I think some twins have, which is, you know, they're dressed alike and they're expecting to do the same activities. But it sounds like you were understood as being these two separate, different, but adjacent humans.
T: Definitely, yeah. My mother very much scoffed at the dress-your-twins-alike ethos. They were very much, I feel like, adhering to this sort of nineties child rearing advice, which held that twins are individuals and they should be in separate classrooms and, you know, even if they believed us to be individuals, which they definitely, definitely did, and and wanted us to have space for that, they also very much wanted us to be close.
I mean to this day my mother is so invested in our relationship, like—you’re twins, of course, you should be close. You're sisters.
Rachel: How do you react to that, either expectation or pressure? If it is pressure?
T: Uh, it feels complicated to me. You know, I'm, it feels like a sort of… it's a magnified impulse that people have, right? Like, you know, generally speaking it's nice to be close with a sibling. But there does feel like there's this heightened expectation that twins are, like, intimate in some way. And I think I've sort of gone in and out of various forms of desire in our relationship. Whether that be like, I wish we could have this sort of intimacy embodied of like true close twinship of like, we wanna do everything together. And I wish we were like, more aligned and best friends like the kind of twinship that is represented in, you know, popular fiction and, movies and TV. Just like, super, close, lively, exciting, dynamic twinship. And then the other part of me is sort of like, why? Just because we're twins does not mean that we have to get along. And we are extraordinarily different people. And I resent her in a lot of ways and love her in a lot of ways.
But like, just because we are twins should not make it so we have to be close. I don't know. There is something about this, like you shared the womb, so… how could you not be? But when you're extraordinarily different people, it feels like you don't fit. And I think that with me and my sister, it felt like we didn't really fit in any camp of twinship. We weren't like the identicals who were confused all the time or who really were just, felt like they had their person in life. You know? We never had that feeling. but we also didn't have you know—I mean, at times we warred. But, we had this sort of uncategorizable, I guess, feeling of twinship that I think that people around us had a hard time and continue to sometimes have a hard time palating.
Rachel: So I'm noticing that you, you do though, use we as a way of describing your, your shared experience. have you talked about this, do you talk about the experience you both have within your relationship?
T: We do, somewhat. I mean, twinship as a concept has felt really loaded to us because we both for a time, were thinking a lot about it and it, it became like a site for all of our twin neurosis to sort of play out. My sister is doing a PhD in clinical psychology, studying twins. and there was a time in which I was writing about a pair of twin sisters, Dear Abby and Ask Ann Landers, and, was like entirely fascinated by their relationship.
So we had conversations during that time, of course, about the ways we were raised, and our relationship. And, but it, but it was also tense because it felt like, who gets to claim twinship as theirs? You know, like there was only space for one of us to be thinking about it. Which is obviously something that has, you know, ramified in our lives sort of more broadly. But, I feel like speaking about twinship has not felt like neutral ground with us. It, it's always felt a little bit loaded.
Rachel: I wanna come back to that idea of only having space for one of you to claim something in your relationship. But I think it's so fascinating that you both found your way to twin studies in some sense, later in life. When you were younger and you were starting to understand yourself in the world, was “twin” an identity that you thought about or claimed? Was it present for you?
T: Not really. I sort of relished it as a party trick, where I would, you know, I was very much out there in the world as a single person. And, I would tell someone, to their delight and surprise, that I was a twin and, sort of watch them watch me doubling, like they had drunk goggles on suddenly. So it felt like the abstract idea of twinship was this thing that I could sort of pull out as like, the fun trivia fact about T_____, she has a twin sister. So, in that way, yes. I don't, I don't, I haven't had a lot of relationships with—oh, that's wrong. In the past I haven't had a lot of relationships with other twins. Now my, business partner and co-editor, she's also a twin sister. And I have another dear friend who's a twin. So there are more twins in my life than ever before. But it was before that. It was this like flourish that I would pull out.
Because we were very rarely inhabiting the same physical space. and we also don't look that much alike. So when we do inhabit the same space, people are not, you know, immediately aware that we are twins. You know, if they're primed for it, they'll see it, but they're more often to think that we're just sisters.
Rachel: Just sisters. Yes. So you were not often inhabiting the same space. It sounds like sixth grade you ventured off into your own spaces. What was that like? What was that separation like?
T: I think it was, I think it was good for us in certain ways. I think, and also fraught as, as everything is during those horrible years of adolescence. I felt, I think, from what I can remember, freer. Because I didn't have to worry about, you know, playing with friends on the playground without her or, or including her in everything that I did. Which I definitely didn't do when I was in elementary school. Like there are absolutely moments of cruelty that I remember.
But I think that I felt unencumbered in this way when it was just me answering for myself. Like I was in control more because I could act the way that I wanted to act without having to look to the other, to see how that impacted them.
Rachel: And did you have any kind of shared social environment at that time?
T: Not really. We were, we were separate. We always had pretty different extracurricular activities. You know, she did soccer and I did gymnastics and ballet and, I think my parents were quite intent on us having our own domains. And so they, they initially gave us, sort of like separate hobbies. And of course we're also just, you know, inherently very different people. And so we gravitated towards different kinds of things. But we didn't have much of a sort of shared social life. I think we were in like Hebrew school together? But yeah, I don't know. I didn't really feel like we were friends at that time. Like I don't, I don't know if we ever really felt like we were each other's confidants.
Rachel: And is that because you just didn't really have that much to share with each other? Or was it more there was like a, a block, like a resentment or something to do with your relationship?
T: Yeah, I don't know. I think—I don't think it was like resentment. I don't know. I think there was like some pathologizing of difference and then we sort of inhabited the roles that we were given. And I was sort of given the character of exuberant, functional, and my sister was very sick and slower—she became sick later—but she was slower and needed a little more handholding. She went to this Quaker school that was better for people who learn better in smaller environments. We were believed to be something sort of from the beginning and then we just sort of followed suit. And there was a chasm between those characters and not a ton of room for coming together.
Rachel: So you've mentioned there's this myth about your birth and it kind of gave you this role. I know this is an incredibly hard question, but do you feel like, as you've gotten older, you've come to understand that that role is something that was given to you versus something you actually were? Are there moments where you feel like kind of in the other role and you're like, this isn't natural. Cause I'm, you know, the exuberant, vibrant one, or something like that?
T: Mm-hmm. Definitely. I mean, it's, it's so limiting, obviously, like it's a very particular box to be put in. I think, yeah, I think, I think I, it's interesting when I read my mother's diaries from that time, which is so weird. So weird. I’m seen in a certain way. Like I saw my like primordial self, my most intrinsic self, just these characteristics that, these ways of moving through the world as like a two-year-old that feels relevant to how I am now. You know? But I think that, the camp of like, does well, doesn't need attention, can thrive on her own versus, needs a ton of attention and struggles. Those become like self-fulfilling prophecies, I guess. and I think it was limiting for sure. I don't think that that's the truth of how either of us really was. You know, like that is a very particular narrative to craft, that I walked first, it's like, well, my sister got her period first, and she was precocious in all of these other ways, and it's just a very cut and dry understanding of what it means to thrive, I guess.
Yeah, I think there was a lot of anxiety when we weren't in the same place. And so because we were not always doing the same things. I think that my mother and my family more generally got anxious about that and then spent some time trying to fix it, and so the dynamic that is born is like: catch up to your sister.
Rachel: What did that feel like for you as far as you can recall?
T: I think like, okay. I mean, I think like there were many years, like starting in eighth grade, my sister was, like violently anorexic and so that, I feel like, really shifted things and, and then I sort of felt like, oh, but like I'm, I can have a hard time too. Just because I'm the one to be caught up with doesn't mean that I'm not struggling or dealing with ugly things. But there was really only, it felt like, space for one of us when things are dire like that or when it's like, when it's like, yeah—mental illness to that extreme. I feel like there was really, and, and maybe it's just my parents' capacity, you know, but there was only room for one twin to be unwell.
And so I very much was like, okay, well that's the way it's gonna be, so like I'm gonna plod along.
Rachel: Take care of yourself.
T: Yeah, yeah. Take care of myself and or like, yeah, be busy, be fine. And that's not to say that it was always like that and that there was no room for me to have my hardships or trials and tribulations. But there was a lot, a lot of, for many years, a lot of anxiety surrounding how my sister was doing and how she was gonna live in the world. And so, that didn't leave a lot of, I mean, that definitely does not incline you to also be a source of anxiety for your parents, you know?
Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel like that's had an impact on how you exist in the world now?
T: Definitely. I mean, of course. I'm definitely hyper functional and although it is interesting that I paired off with someone so young, there's a lot of sort of like twin-likeness, I think, in our relationship. And it sometimes I wonder if I had a sort of hunger for that and that I'd never really gotten it with my own sister. And so I needed to create it elsewhere. But yeah, I think, um, of course that was formative. Um. It was hard. Especially because she was very sick for a long time and it was in and out of levels of severity. And so you just sort of never knew when things were gonna get really bad. And I think some of, some of the eating disorder stuff, which I imagine you're probably gonna come across with other twins, some of it was in reference to me.
And so that also made me really wanna keep her at a distance. So there were all of these complicated entangled dynamics going on between us, that have, yeah, very much formed our contemporary relationship and my contemporary self.
Rachel: What was your relationship like with her at this point? Like were you sort of communicating about this stuff?
T: Like when she was sort of in the throes of, I mean, the thing is, that started in eighth grade and then the last time she was hospitalized or institutionalized was when I was a freshman in college. And obviously the anorexia was a manifestation of something much deeper, which is like, intense chronic depression. And so that was a long period of time. I mean, that was like eighth grade to, you know, 19 for the eating disorder. But then, for just like living a functional life, that took many more years after that. So, I think when we did talk, I, I, I, I felt so much concern and anxiety about it all. Like, when would it happen again? When would she, when would she start getting back into the throes of this eating disorder thing? And then like, is she okay?
And, I went to school far away and that helped, the physical distance helped me just sort of not think about it that much, and when we did talk, I would sort of take on this almost like big sister role of like, it's all gonna be okay. And I'll talk you through your anxiety or whatever's happening, like, if you're having a panic attack or something. Something like that. So I felt comfortable in that role of being someone she turns to in crisis, when she can't get that from my parents because my mother's wailing, or she's—my mother is very fragile emotionally. So we did speak but not in a sort of catch up, sisterly, unloaded way. There was always this subtext.
It was always the subtext. Yeah. And like, resentment.
Rachel: What was the resentment about?
T: I mean, I felt like I was put in a box by her. She sort of initially, when we were young, blamed some of the eating disorder stuff on me, um, was like, you could never understand what I go through because you are naturally thin and comfortable in the world, which I didn't really, which—not that this matters that much, but our bodies were pretty similar. And I had never really thought of myself as someone with a body until she started saying, “I wanna be skinnier. I need to be skinnier like you.”
And then I think there was resentment for, like, she took up so much space. I mean, I feel like my entire high school years were haunted by my parents’ anguish over how intense the situation was with her. And I sort of just disappeared into school and into my room and just sort of tried to like recede from it all because there didn't really feel like there was that much space. And when there was, when there was upset, I sometimes felt like I was a very easy place to sort of, I don't know, project some of that upset, because there was nowhere else for it to go.
My parents have a fraught relationship. My sister was unwell. So there was just, it was just like a… It was a hard dynamic. It was a painful—there were painful feelings in the house. So I think that's where a lot of my resentment comes from. And then I think maybe more, like, deeply, I think I resented that she could not just get better and buck up and figure it out, like I had to, you know? Like, life is hard. We're lucky. Grow up. That was sort of, I think, some of what I felt, which is obviously like an incredibly—like, there's no empathy in what I just said. And I don't feel that anymore at all, obviously. But I think there was, um, some feelings of just, yeah, resentment and, and regret that we couldn't be so close because we were just so different.
Rachel: So it sounds like you had to manage a lot of other people's difficult times and probably also a lot of your own, but maybe more on your own. But I know that in spaces where there's one sibling who is struggling, it can be challenging to find ways to take pride in your own happiness or your own success. What was that like growing up when you were in high school, that kind of time, adolescence, when you're sort of finding yourself and there can be those moments of joy and maybe you win something or you do well at something. And you wanna celebrate that. Were you able to do that?
What were those experiences like?
T: I think I was, you know, as much as I say there wasn't room, there was no room for me to be in crisis, but I do think there was room for me to be successful. And so I was, in certain ways. I was also extraordinarily unhappy in high school as, you know, most sane people are. But, yeah, I did feel, I felt celebrated by my parents, I think with my sister, I think there was always this feeling of my celebration causes her some pain. That my success is somehow diminishing to her, that there are only so many pieces of the pie. Um, and if I'm getting more pieces of the pie, then she's being gypped somehow. I think I was always reticent to share successes to her, but I think, with my parents, they were very happy to celebrate me and, you know, as we got older, like when I graduated college, I remember my sister wrote me this really beautiful note that was you know, “I saw you walk to get your diploma. And all I could feel was unadulterated, joy and happiness for you. There was not a single twinge of jealousy or comparison. I just felt proud.” And that meant so much. Because I think that really prior to that moment of graduating college, it always felt like some kind of success, or pleasure in my world was somehow threatening to her.
And I don't know, I wonder sometimes if there is a part of me that—if there is this sort of inherent competitiveness to me. Like if that is just intrinsic in me, and that maybe she was picking up on something that was right. That if there was a success that it somehow was gonna take something away from her. I know more generally that's not true, but I wonder if there was some sort of way in which I, I don't know, lorded it over her in some way or something, or felt superior. I don't think it was lorded over, but it felt superior.
Rachel: So you said you went to college far away from New Jersey.
T: So far.
Rachel: Tell me about that. your, your choice to do that and what that experience was like.
T: Coldest place in the world. I went to live in Minnesota, God knows why.
I went to this tiny liberal arts school called Carleton College, it's in a rural town outside of Minneapolis. And I took a year off between high school and college as well. So I think that I just, I don't know, I wanted to do something a little different and meet a different crowd of people. I was very sick of the sort of waspy suburban scene. I very swiftly though, as I wonder if many twins are like this, but I've always had one dear best friend who's a woman, and I very quickly found that when I was in school, and then also at the same time, very swiftly started dating my now partner.
So I felt like in a certain way, those are the relationships that fortified me. Those were the sort of stand-ins for the twinship that I was always promised, but never really delivered. It's funny, I remember my freshman fall, my sister got very sick again and I remember finding that out and like drinking myself to sickness cause I was just like, I couldn't—I was so far away. And also just like, I felt like, here we are again. Um, and then I visited her that winter break and she was at this inpatient program in upstate New York, and I remember she was so skinny when I saw her, I started sobbing and like—I had never had that sort of like intense reaction, but to be confronted with it, having not seen her in a few months.
And she told me later that she felt vindicated by that.
Rachel: What did you take from that? The vindicated comment?
T: I don't know—that she could see how far she had gone reflected back at her. Like I was a mirror to her and she hadn't really understood the extremeness of what she had done to herself until she saw me see it. And then I think she felt—it's not like, proud, but when you're in that—when you're that sick, you know, it's all twisted up and weird. And I think that there was some sort of pride at how far she could push herself. And like, I mean, she was the skinniest one, you know. She was the skinny twin then.
Rachel: What did it make you feel about your own body?
T: Mm-hmm. Well, I remember she—we took pictures. She really wanted to take pictures together when I was up there visiting her, and I had sort of been going through like a chubby, not like a chubby phase, but you know, freshman year, you know, you're drinking more than you might have. Um, and I remember just like the shock at our physical difference. Like I looked like this healthy, slightly meaty-faced girl, and she was so gaunt and she looked like a preemie again, you know. She looked underbaked.
And, I mean, she really wanted to take pictures. I remember that so vividly. We have so many pictures of her from that, from when she was upstate. And I think, of course, it made me much more self-conscious about my body. Like, I think from the beginning I hadn't ever really been aware of myself as someone with a body and that I was so thin, but it, I mean, it, I, in the way that, you know, so many teenage girls end up flirting with, some form of eating disorder, of course I had been in and out of that forever. And I think that, I think that there was some, I think there was some resentment. I remember when I looked at those pictures of us, of her being so small and thin and me looking so normal and robust and being like: she's done it. Yeah.
Rachel: Well, it also makes me think about, it's kind of a perfect example of how, you know, you are one thing in the world until you're next to your twin sister, and then you exist in the world of those two things.
T: Exactly.
Rachel: And it doesn't matter who you are in the outside world. It's only what is relevant is this this universe of two.
T: This universe of two. Yeah. And like you're so immediately aware of what's alike and what's not.
Rachel: It makes me think of what you mentioned earlier about, claiming twinship. You know, if you're a person in the world studying a topic, and then someone else is also studying that topic, you're not like, nu-uh, that's mine. Maybe some people are who are hyper-competitive, but…
T: Yeah.
Rachel: When it's these two, this universe… Can you talk a little bit more about what that has been like to both discover this, obvious but not so obvious interest and have to negotiate the other person's involvement with that?
T: Mm-hmm. I mean, it felt so hard. It felt like such a strange replication of all of these dynamics that I thought we had sort of been through. And then when we were both investigating yeah, this similar terrain, I, I felt myself—a lot of feelings rearing up in me of desire for ownership over the thing. That there wasn't space for both of us to do it.
And that it, and it rarely crossed my mind that we would in any way, collaborate on it, you know, which now, now that I've put that project in a drawer and I'm working on various other things, and I think that I'm in a more stable place, I would never feel that way. And I could—the idea of collaborating eventually is exciting to me. But then it felt like there's only room for one twin to write about twinship. If we're both doing the same thing, even if it's from slightly different vantage points, we are necessarily going to be pitted against each other in some way. And I mean the twins that I was researching and writing about were, you know, they were constantly and viciously compared.
And I do think that because we spent so much of our lives in sort of separate domains and like separated so initially to then be—to then have both found our way to this locus of study was sort of alarming, and new territory, you know? We hadn't had a ton of practice at it and. And I don't think I, I think there was a lot of feelings of, I don't know, wanting it for myself. I mean it was complicated all around, but I think in retrospect, I don't know. I think that there was a hunger in me to do it so well that she couldn't have it anymore.
Rachel: And it's interesting cause you actually put it in the drawer, and she's still pursuing her study. Do you think that this kind of energy around it contributed to you wanting to get away from the project?
T: Definitely. Yeah, I mean it felt so familialy complicated. Like it was, I don't know, we were—there was a lot of pain and tsuris when we would talk about it. Or it would feel so complicated in family dynamics. And also I just think, more generally, like the project that I was pursuing about these twins was so devastating and horrible and their relationship—their relationship ruptures early on, but they really never find their way back to each other. And I didn't wanna spend time with that ugly of a twin story for that long, cause I was initially sort of interested in what I could learn from them. And then it ultimately felt like everything born of this research and writing is negatively impacting me and my relationship with my sister. So maybe the best thing to do is to put it away.
Rachel: I actually wanna go back to your visit to upstate New York, because that feels like a really significant moment. Because you were a freshman in college, and that was just a visit, right? Like, you had these intense feelings of being in this twin universe while you were there, and then you left and went back to your life.
T: Yes.
Rachel: What did that feel like to actually return to your space? How did that feel in your body your affect?
T: I think I was really, really good at compartmentalizing by then, cause that had happened a lot throughout high school and middle school, That, I could sort of move between and it would only manifest when I was like drinking or something, you know? Then I would like actually allow myself to feel the feelings. Like I remember going, I think it was a different visit. I visited her twice up there. I remember going to a friend's house party after, and smoking a joint and eating pizza on the roof. And watching all this sort of debaucherous, college behavior unfold. And then thinking about her, you know, whatever, 10-minute drive away in this like, you know, uh, glossy prison. Um, and then just putting it away and, I don't know if there—there wasn't, we never had that sort of, she feels physical pain, I feel physical pain, any of that sort of you know, eerie twin-like physical connection. I think when I would think about it, my stomach would hurt and then I would avert my eyes.
Rachel: And you said at that time you were developing these, what might have been like filler twin relationships. What did that look like? How did it feel like you were manifesting your lost twinship with these other people while this was going on?.
T: Yeah, I think in a lot of ways, I mean, I thought a lot about, like, this is so silly, but I thought a lot about my bed with my boyfriend at the time as like the womb again, kind of, and I sleep very intensely and I need a lot of space and I like splay out and I leave him the smallest possible pocket. And he’s sort of relegated to the corner in this way that I think my sister was when I was in the womb. And I think that's also sort of the story of our, or one of many possible stories of our growing up, that I took up a lot of, I took up a lot of, um, space. I mean, she took up a lot. We both took up a lot of space in different ways, but that I took up a lot of space in my sort of affect and way of being in the world. I don't know, I've always really cherished intensity and singularity in friendships and in relationships and, you know, that's not anomalous for people, but I do feel like there's sort of this like twin-like mode about it where it feels like there's this fixation on this one person and this world that you create together.
And I feel like basically, anything that my sister might have been able to provide me, other people were providing me better and with less complications involved. And so it was really easy to turn to a friendship with someone who I had just naturally a lot more in common with, without any of this baggage or like painful history, you know?
So yeah, I don't know if this is the case for twins specifically, but I have felt like there is this real desire to share my life and to share certain things in an intense way with someone, with one other person. And that does feel like the legacy of twinship to me and that I just never really had it with her.
Rachel: When you were forming those relationships and feeling like you were being gratified in certain ways, how did that change your relationship with your sister, if at all?
T: Mm-hmm. I just was farther away from her. I think. We go in and out of cycles of friendship still, I would say, but it made me less inclined to, um, be super present with her, because I was getting my needs fulfilled elsewhere, and not from her. Yeah, I guess I just didn't need her as much. Not that I ever really felt like I've needed her, but having robust relationships elsewhere made it even easier to think less about her, which is obviously a source of guilt.
Rachel: Is it something that has ever come up explicitly between the two of you? This feeling of like need or lack of need and filling her role elsewhere?
T: Not really. We talk a lot more about our family dynamic and the dynamic between our parents than we are able to talk about our dynamic. And I think it scares me to talk about that because she's articulated to me that she needs me and I don't need her. And that feels horrible because I love her and she's my sister and I will always love her. But that imbalance feels fraught, that imbalance of need and, I think I feel some guilt that I don't actively seek out a closer twinship, a closer friendship with my twin. And yet I don't.
She reaches out to me more than I reach out to her. She's reached out to me more in times of need because I'm a person to go to for that. And I feel very comfortable in that role, as I said before, of helping her talk through something or comforting her. That feels like something I've inhabited often. And so that's an easier role for me to move into than it is for us to just move into like general friendship.
But I think a feeling that I have um—when my parents go, whenever that happens, I will deeply want to fill a maternal role for her. I want her to never feel, like, scared and alone in the world, you know? And I don't think she feels that now because our family is around. But I think she worries.
Rachel: That's really interesting that you can look to the future and be like, I will be that for you then. And I want to be. But the kind of in between space is harder to—
T: Navigate.
Rachel: Yeah. it sounds like in relation to her, you have a role in the world, which is like a carer or a nurturer or something, or a protector, something like that. Do you feel like when you are either physically with her or talking to her, is there like a change that happens for your affect or the way you feel your body or your behavior that you wouldn't act that way elsewhere in the world?
T: We don't spend a lot of time alone together. I—it's funny, I feel like she, she's sort of a cuddly person with our family and with me and I, like, I feel like stone. And that's like generally increasingly something that I—I'm not a big touchy person. But yeah, when I'm with her, I don't feel physically open. As much as I might be like, offering her care in some way, even though I don't think that's exactly what I am doing these days, I feel very like—really like my body is sort of protecting itself. I feel like I sort of go into myself a little bit too.
Like there's like this withdrawal, a little bit.
Rachel: Do you have a sense of why that is?
T: Not really. I think like, I don't. I don't know, maybe there's some like element of, uh, there's only so much I can give. And like there, there's like this like, just sort of like, I don't know, like physical wall that like, feels like a, a way of like…
I don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah. I don't know.
Rachel: That's a good answer.
T: (Laughs)
Rachel: Um, so you said that now, later in life, you have found more twins in your life.
T: Yeah.
Rachel: I'm curious how that, and also just the process of, you know, finding your way in the world, doing things you care about, having a partner. How has that changed or evolved the way you think about your identity as a twin?
T: I think I'm trying to imbue it with less significance. And just feel like it's another relationship in my life that is important to me and that demands nurturing in the way that many other friendships and relationships in my life do. And that, I don't know, that so much attention on one thing is not necessarily a good thing. Yeah, that it's like one, one aspect of me and not a defining one.
I think being around other twins who are very close can often make me like hunger, hunger for, feel resentful of the fact that I didn't quite have that, or that we haven't had that, generally, and that we're just very different. And I think acceptance of that is something I've come to, which is just like, okay, maybe this is not someone who I would have chosen as my twin, but she is and I love her. And the less I worry about the kind of twin and the mode of twinship that I have, the better. We're just two girls, you know?
Rachel: Yeah. Just two girls.
T: Just two girls.
Rachel: After I've made you talk about this for an hour, being a twin.
T: We're just two random people. I don't even, can you—
Rachel: What's the big deal? (Laughs)
T: Why are we doing this?
Rachel: Well, you've been very generous.
T: (Laughs)
Rachel: But I actually, I have a closing question that I like to ask, which may or may not have anything to do with being a twin. Which is, when do you feel the most like yourself?
T: I love that question. It's funny, you would think I would have thought about this before, but I haven't. Um, hmm.
I think when I've made something, whatever that thing is, and I'm watching other people enjoy it. I think that I feel very in my body and, there's some feeling in that exchange that makes me feel alive and at peace, I guess. That and walking long, long distances, absurd distances, and talking on the phone.
That's my favorite.
