https://likeness.ing Likeness Wed, 26 Feb 2025 00:33:10 +0000 https://likeness.ing en https://likeness.ing/Home Tue, 01 Aug 2023 16:33:27 +0000 Likeness https://likeness.ing/Home Lucy L. Emma L.&nbsp; Lance T. A.G. I.G. T. Izumi N. More coming soon. <img width="819" height="1003" width_o="819" height_o="1003" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/522944ab68fec883aaba7635d0f1098f42b058c059af2f30a829ac239aaf84f7/removal.ai_0560e8fe-ba68-4372-9b06-c343fa07701e_341003151_1001586921204330_6571066890069105822_n_0BUR51.png" data-mid="186688008" border="0" data-scale="69" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/819/i/522944ab68fec883aaba7635d0f1098f42b058c059af2f30a829ac239aaf84f7/removal.ai_0560e8fe-ba68-4372-9b06-c343fa07701e_341003151_1001586921204330_6571066890069105822_n_0BUR51.png" /> https://likeness.ing/Lucy-L Tue, 20 Dec 2022 22:11:56 +0000 Likeness https://likeness.ing/Lucy-L Lucy L. Themes: identical twins, friendship, codependence, depression, identity, sisters &amp;lt;a href="https://smithmeade.bandcamp.com/track/interview-with-lucy-l"&amp;gt;Interview with Lucy L. by Rachel Smith&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;This interview has been condensed and edited. Rachel: Lucy, if you could just introduce yourself for the recording in whatever way you feel comfortable. Lucy: So, I'm Lucy Lake and I am here to talk about my experience of being a twin. I was born in Melbourne, Australia and moved to Tasmania with my parents and my sister when I was about nine months old, I think. So I've grown up in Tasmania. Tasmania's a an island at the bottom of Australia. It's quite cold, the coldest part of Australia. My parents are not married, which is normal for me, but not normal for some people. And they were together until Emma and I were probably about seven, and then they split up and were separated for most of my childhood. So we spent our childhood, we moved a lot, moved houses a lot, so we've never had one family home. That was just normal for us. But I suppose I've always sort of wished that I had a real, like a place I've always wanted, wanted a, a home place. And then when we were 15, mom and dad actually got back together. So we, from about the age of 16, we had one home and stayed there for probably about, six or seven years, which is the longest time we've kind of had one space. We had a childhood that was going outside and just playing, being very creative. A couple of our houses were in the bush, so we played a lot in the bush, with our neighbors. But mostly, mostly our childhood was just Emma and I, outside of school. We were quite, kind of wild, a little bit eccentric children, but we were also extremely sensitive and, and I think very hyper-aware of things like comparison and, different being different. Daddy is English and mum is from New Zealand. And so we never, well, we always felt, I think, a bit different that we didn't have connections in Tasmania at all. We both, as children, spoke with English accents, very English accents, which is quite strange but we did and got teased a lot for that as well as compared a lot for being twins. So I think that, we being very sensitive children, that heightened—we, we really noticed it. And I think I personally was very anxious from childhood and I feel like those things, fed into that. So yeah, childhood, you know, beautiful freedom. You know, a really lovely life out in the world. But also, an underlying anxiety throughout our childhood. We also had, from very early on, a kind of shared best friend. We met her when we were five and and she would spend a lot of time with us,&nbsp; on holidays as well. And so for us, I feel like she provided that kind of balance that we always kind of sought for. I think it would be great for us if we had a third party growing up as twins. We would've loved to have another sibling. And interestingly, we do actually have another sibling, who we met in adulthood. But, throughout our childhood, Ella, our friend Ella, kind of provided that little third party, and she's given us a lot of insights into our being twins that we probably wouldn't have picked up on otherwise. I think that, being a twin for us, I'm not sure if it's for everyone, but when we're both sensitive people and overthinkers—it felt quite isolating. I think we felt like we were a bit strange or a bit weird, and I think that having a third party, it normalizes it. So in calling out, you know, little, eccentricities or little funny things that we, we did, and in kind of verbalizing that it, it made it feel less of a weird kind of secret feeling and more of just like a—it made me feel calmer that she could do that. And she's done that all through our lives, you know, there'll be certain things— I'll give you an example. You know, I've seen twins getting very fixated on the way that they look and that each other looks. And I've seen things of twins getting plastic surgery to look exactly identical, and this kind of thing. And superficially, it, it seems like, oh, they just want to be really identical twins because they think it's cool. But actually I think that this fixation on looks comes more from being constantly compared and a feeling that fear of someone saying “you're the ugly twin,” or “she's the ugly twin.” Or “you’re hotter than her,” or, you know, these comparisons that really hurt. And so I, we, we didn't realize we did this, but for a lot of our lives—and we still do it, we are very, obviously much more conscious of it now— but we would pick at how each other were standing, and we'd hit each other's tummies and say, “put your tummy in,” or we'd say, “do your neck,” which meant stop having a double chin. And we'd do this all the time. And it was this constant stress and this constant thinking about not just how you look, but also how they look. Cause they might be, you know, bringing themselves down, which I suppose also brings you down. But then one day our friend, this friend Ella, called it out and was like, “do you realize saying do your neck is a really weird thing to say? And to hit each other in the stomach and say, ‘put your stomach in‘ is a, is a really weird thing to do?” But she laughed about it and it's kind of been an ongoing joke ever since. And her doing that, I mean, firstly it was a bit of a slap in the face—oh my god, this is really strange. But also, it's enabled us to be more self-aware, and to lighten up about things as well. I think we could get very serious, being sensitive, overthinking twins. And so having a third party that can lighten that up and, and call things out in a light way rather than a doomsday kind of way was just so helpful. I think also, having a third party or a third sibling, I don't know. I think I always felt like it would just make it— you wouldn't just be this pair of kind of weird twins. You'd have another sibling relationship as well, which would be normal. Not just your weird twin thing. Rachel: What do you feel about being twins made you weird? Lucy: I think it's probably something that maybe started early in childhood, going to school and being kind of gawked at. And we had an experience where often, we would be trying to make friends and we would make friends, but then often if there were activities or, you had to partner up, people would just say, oh, you two go together because you are twins, kind of thing. Instead of us having the opportunity to, create our own, stronger bonds with other people. And I think that made me feel like an outsider. Like I wasn't just a person in the world making friends. I had this added kind of, person that was, holding me back from that, and I resented that. We both resented that we didn't have the opportunity to create our own friendships because the other one was always there. You know, my nightmare is, growing up and becoming single and only having each other. And, and I think some people embrace that and you know, their life partner is their twin. They look the same. They go everywhere together. It's this really difficult kind of thing because one part of me thinks that would be so easy and it would work, obviously, because we do spend a lot of time together. We do have, you know, the closest relationship of any. But I feel like it would be almost just giving over and, I would find it—I find it sad and weird, like, you know, when twins speak the same. I think because of feeling like an outsider as a child and, and feeling like it was this kind of difference that kept me apart from other people, I strive not to become that person in my life. Even though sometimes I just feel like I know it would work and it would be fine. But I just, I don't want to, I don't wanna do it. I want to have other, I wanna have other meaningful relationships, not just with my twin sister. We've never really fought over things. We, we are not competitive in that way. I think we've both always been...so our biggest concern has always been that the other one's okay. And that's probably our biggest shadow as well, that we can never feel fully free, ‘cause we're always worried about the other one being okay. That is probably the hardest part for me and for her, I think of being a twin. That is the hardest. It's a feeling of constant... I just, I never feel free to just feel the way I feel. And you know, it probably started, in primary school when you start having competitive grades or sports or these kinds of things. If one of us would win, then the other one wouldn't have won. And so one of us would be happy in trying to celebrate an achievement. But the other one isn't happy because it didn't go so well for them. And so your happiness is always tainted in a slight way by your very closest partner not experiencing the same thing. And we'd always say that we were happy for each other. “Of course we're happy for you.” But you know, on the flip side, if something's disappointed you or life's not going well, or or you're unwell or whatever, it's very difficult to feel like you can fully sit in that as well, because the other person may have won or they might have gotten a good score and you don't wanna take that happiness away from them either. And so, ugh, it's just, it's just in all aspects of our life. You know, I got a boyfriend before Emma, and so then, I had a boyfriend, but always felt guilty in a way because she didn't. And so then your focus becomes, okay, well what can we do to, make things good for you? What can we do to, you know, we just gotta get you on the same path, too. And then, and then things will be okay, and then we'll be okay. But life doesn't work like that. And we have just found in all, all areas of our lives, throughout our whole lives, this is the dynamic that plays out. And, you know, there's maybe been a couple of pockets where things are going well for both of us and we're both feeling like life's good. But it's hard to feel like life is just good if life is not good for your twin. We just can't actually feel fully good if the other one's not feeling good. If I'm, going through a period in my life where I'm depressed, say, the constant conversation is just “Please stop worrying about me because, you know, I would feel so much better if you were just fine. If you were just living your life, I would feel...”, “But I can't feel better because I know that you’re feeling sad and, you know, it's so hard for me to just go and be happy when every time I talk to you on the phone, you're sad.” It's just this back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And it's gotten much, much better. So, when we were probably 15 or 16, I got really depressed, I suppose, I was, I was just&nbsp; battling with being a teenager. And Emma just—it's not like she played into it or anything, but she just, she just withdrew completely and all, everything was about me. Everything she did was for me, she basically lived her life to try and make me, okay. So I'd come home and she would have cleaned my entire room, absolutely spotless. It's one of the things she does is, you know, if you're feeling bad, you'll come home and your house will be immaculate with flowers and a vase and a present on your bed. And she would do that for me a lot of the time. And I just kind of thought, okay I've got the best sister ever. Like, yay. But over time realized that that was actually a really unhealthy thing for her to be doing because she was just so desperate for me to feel okay that every thought that went through her head was just, okay, well what can I do? Her entire day would be structured around buying me the thing and spending, you know, three hours cleaning and blah, blah, blah. And then having everything set up. And, you know, she was foregoing the things that would make her feel good because she needed to make me feel good. This is another thing that Ella's called us out on and that we, now can joke about. And it is an ongoing joke because she still does it. Sometimes if she's at my house and I'm not, I'll know that there's a likelihood I'll come home and my whole house would've been cleaned and everything will be perfect. But at least if she does do it, we laugh about it and I say, “Emma, you just cannot do this. This is so... but thanks as well.” I suppose she's always been... she's the older and she's always been a bit the kind of leader. And I suppose she took on this kind of caring, giving-up thing for me who was more like the little princess one who was like, yes, yes, please me, me. And I just took it. And because she was giving it more to me, I just took more of it. And around 21, 22, it got extremely unbalanced. And Emma didn't have an identity. She couldn't walk into a shop and pick out a top that she liked. She could walk into a shop and pick out a top that I would like, and she'd pick out anything that I would like, and she'd say, “Oh, these would look good on you. This would be good for you.” If you asked her to pick out something for her, she just couldn't. And it was so, so unbalanced. It was unbearable. We were fighting a lot. we, I'd say... we'd say we hated each other. I was just like, “Why?!” I was frustrated, extremely frustrated. And I just, I just, I was frustrated that she couldn't pick out her own clothes and that I was constantly having to... she just had no self-esteem. And it was funny because it was like that until probably we‘re 21 and she came into my room one day and said, “I've just realized that it's okay for me to like the same things as you. And I do like the same things as you, and that's okay.” Because growing up, we'd been encouraged to be different, as I think a lot of twins are. But you know, it was, it was almost a back flip from something that mum was trying to encourage in a really positive way. She encouraged us to be different and I think oddly, it actually ended up making us feel like we weren't allowed to be the same. And because I was a little bit more assertive with what I liked, as soon as I would say “I like orange,” Emma would subconsciously go, “Okay, I'm not allowed to like that.” And I think, because inherently we are actually extremely similar, it got to the point where there was nothing left for her. There was just nothing left for her to like, and so, she was told she could paint her room whatever color she wanted. She just couldn't choose a color because I think she felt like every color would be wrong, because I like it. And so she ended up choosing some ridiculous lime green color that she hated and had this lime green room that she hated going into. And I had this perfect room that was all the colors that I loved. And she loved it too, but she didn't feel like she could. And subjects at school were the same. I loved art. She felt like she couldn't love art, so she would just talk herself down and talk herself out of liking it. And she'd say, “Oh, but Lucy's good at art. I'm not. Lucy's good at English. I'm not. I'm not really good at anything.” And so yeah, when we were 21 or 22, she came into my room one day and was like, “I've just realized I'm allowed to like the same things as you. That's okay.” And I was like, “Yeah, you are. That's okay.” We've never really had major fights since then. because she's just slowly learned how to be herself and that's happened to be in line with how I am. We've definitely gotten more similar as we've gotten older, but that's okay because we understand that we are, we must just be similar, I suppose. Rachel: Did your sense of what Emma was interested in influence what you were interested in at all? Lucy: I think there was an element of, if she did something, I wouldn't do it. But I don't think we understood that at all. Our experience of primary school and high school wasn't that positive. And I think it's partly because there was always an undertone of discomfort or, or a lack of freedom to choose. We tried to do what was cool or what was, acceptable as a way to choose what to do. Because choosing by what we just liked wasn't really happening. Personally, I know and I find it quite weird, but I would kind of mirror what Ella was doing. I have memories of trying to make my handwriting exactly the same as hers and trying to draw in the same way that she drew and trying to be good at the things she was good at, because I suppose she was the person I chose that was an example of someone cool and that I wanted to be like, Just felt a bit sad for the fact that I spent my childhood trying to be somebody else because I didn't really know what I wanted, I didn't feel free to just do things the way I would do them. I feel really lucky that we've had Ella throughout our lives to show us some of these things. if we didn't know that stuff, I imagine we'd be one of those pairs of twins who were just like, we hate each other. Life would be easier without the other one. And I really empathize with twins who I hear say that they wish the other one wasn't there, or they wish the other one was gone because it's such a horrible thing to say and a horrible feeling, but I get it. Because during those times, you know, that's the feeling that that was always around. And it stops you from being able to live your life as you would if you were a single person in the world. I wish I was one of those people that was just kind of happy go-lucky, you know, let's play jokes ‘cause we're twins, let's trick people. We were never like that because we were always so self-conscious of the fact we were twins. I feel like it'd be easier being a twin if you were, a less serious person. Definitely those times where we've lived apart are much less intense times in our lives and a lot more free. When I was at my separate school, I spent a lot of time by myself and reclined a bit into myself. I suppose maybe it, um, exaggerated the little bits of us that are different. Where Emma went to school, she was a tomboy and she was loud and naughty and whereas I was kind of, much more introverted. But at the same time there was a freedom because I was just me. There's always part of a freedom and part of a discomfort because, I was free because I was just me , but I also didn't feel quite me because I didn't have her, which is just, just too complicated. And then as soon as, you know—I have a snapshot memory of Emma coming to my primary school once, and everyone just staring and calling her Lucy and her feeling weird about it. And then from then on everyone was like, “You've got a twin! You've got a twin!” and it just ruined that kind of freedom that I had. Yeah, it ruined, it, it, it muddies your your identity as just you. And all of a sudden it's back to people saying, “Hi Lucy, how are you? How's your sister?” This kind of thing. And it's just like, you know, the conversation's always just stopped by “Well, gotta remind you, you're twin. Gotta ask about your twin.” And when we do come back together, and are reminded of that, it always starts to feel more suffocating. And slowly you feel more suffocated until a point where usually one of us goes, I'm gonna go live somewhere else, or I'm gonna go do something else. But then when we do do that and live separately, we pine to be together again. So, I don't know, I find it complex and difficult to work out. I don't know how to find a balance. Rachel: Are you able to tell when you feel like yourself?Lucy: Probably when I am in a relationship with somebody else, because it's only mine and she's not involved. And I am only theirs. Not Emma and I. I've had a tendency to, when I get a boyfriend, to just disappear and just live this, like, I don't know—I mean, I fall in love big time, and I kind of block out the rest of the world when I do. And I think, I think it's partly because I feel a freedom when that happens to be just me. I've always put it down to being that I am a twin and have dependency issues. But yeah, in a relationship she's not involved and, and in a relationship, it's the only place where I feel like she's my sister. Like I feel like we have a sister relationship, not so much a twin relationship. and I love watching her and my partner be like sister and brother kind of relationship because it makes me feel normal and it makes me feel like, yeah, she's just my sister. She's not this other part of me that's always intertwined. Rachel: On that note of just a sister, not a twin, you'd mentioned that, a little bit later in life you met another sibling. Could you talk a little about that experience? Lucy: Growing up, we knew that dad had a child before he met mum and had us, but he had never met her. And we, we didn't even know her name. But for some reason throughout our childhood, we'd always say, “yeah, we have another sister,” even though she was just an idea really in our heads. But I think we even then found comfort in the idea that there was somebody else. And then we would've been maybe 27, 26 and she got in contact with dad. She said, you know, could I contact my sisters? And so we sent her this very tentative email saying like, “Hello, we would love to to talk to you if, but only if you want to,” kind of thing. And she wrote back and was just like, “Yes, yay!” We just had an instant connection and, and we emailed back and forth for a year or so probably.&nbsp; Growing up as children, I think we were very similar. I see her as kind of like a combination of both of us, but without the twin stuff, And so then we flew over to America to meet her. And we met her on Santa Monica Pier and we hid behind this thing with this bunch of flowers and sparkles and we were waiting there. And then we saw her and I was just like, everything was okay and we just ran out through sparkles all over her. And from that moment we just instantly had a connection. And Americans being Americans were all like, “You guys are sisters!” And we'd be like, “Yeah!” And it was just so.—to be seen as like sisters, not just “Hey twins!” It was like, it just felt so warm and, and comforting. At different times throughout our visit, I'd have a conversation with her about something and Emma wasn't there, but I'd be talking to my sister about things, not just feeding into this constant, weird, suffocating, spiraly conversation that Emma and I have. It was like it was an outsider perspective, but she was also our sister. And I felt like a little sister for a start, which was such a nice feeling. I feel like I'm just me. I'm not, me and Emma. that's probably the only other time where I feel like that, I feel like she sees me as Lucy, not “the twins” kind of thing. I felt like I had somebody who could give me advice without, this closeness that kind of makes you never really know if... you know, I feel like Emma and my closeness, whenever we give each other advice, it's with this desperation to make things okay. So that, so that we'll both be okay. Rachel: It sounds like there have been a lot of developments in your relationship. How would you describe the relationship you have now? Lucy: We're both much better at calling out little interdependencies, little things that might not be healthy early so that we can keep them in mind while we live our lives. I'd say we are pretty, I mean, we're good friends. We're we're best friends really. but we're both pretty unsure at the moment in our own lives, let alone together. And so, I'm very grateful that we've done all the working out that we have in the past because if we hadn't, I think this time of our lives would be just awful. That's where always this stuff comes up more. You know, if I'm devastated, she's devastated. If things are going well, if life's just rolling on and things are working out and you know, good things are happening, then I suppose we feed off each other. And in that way things tend to roll on well for her too. But then at some point something will start not being great for her or not being great for me and then we'll also feed off that and roll into that as well. And so whatever intensity of a feeling you're experiencing as one person, it's exaggerated by the fact that she's also feeling it too. And there's no respite from that. It's just much more intense. we spend so much time trying to work out how to make that less intense. But I just dunno. I just dunno how to do it. I think we're pretty aligned and we're very close. She's thinking of maybe moving next year to live somewhere else, and it probably is just about time for us to have another one of those breaks. But you know, that's only to make it more balanced. It's a positive thing rather than a desperation to get out of this space. And it's a decision made by knowing what's healthy for us. Each of us have worked on being better at being alone, so we are definitely more balanced. Probably almost, almost balanced. &nbsp; I don't think anyone really understands those difficult complexities of being a twin.&nbsp; I suppose, it's the more you can work out your own ways of managing your own self. It's like what we say is, “If you’re okay, I'll be okay.” And it's actually true. The more she deals with her own stuff and makes herself okay, and the more I do that, the more balanced we are when we’re together as well. Emma, Lucy’s twin, was also interviewed. Listen here. <img width="744" height="935" width_o="744" height_o="935" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bd0e75c64ee30f7c4858f000886ec46d78b63979a4fd1bc4abc5e134451936ae/image_6487327.JPG" data-mid="162443644" border="0" data-scale="77" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/744/i/bd0e75c64ee30f7c4858f000886ec46d78b63979a4fd1bc4abc5e134451936ae/image_6487327.JPG" /> Next https://likeness.ing/Emma-L Tue, 20 Dec 2022 22:23:15 +0000 Likeness https://likeness.ing/Emma-L Emma L. Themes: identical twins, identity, self-esteem, self-discovery, codependency, sisters&nbsp; &nbsp; &amp;lt;a href="https://smithmeade.bandcamp.com/track/interview-with-emma-l"&amp;gt;Interview with Emma L. by Rachel Smith&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; This interview has been condensed and edited. Rachel: Emma, can you introduce yourself for the recording in whatever way feels comfortable to you? Emma: I'm Emma, Emma Lake. I come from Australia, Tasmania, the little island down the bottom. I'm 34 years old and I have a twin sister called Lucy, identical twin. My dad is from England and my mom is from New Zealand. They met in New Zealand and moved to Australia and we were born in Melbourne. We moved to Tasmania when we were about one 18 months, something like that. and then brought up in Tasmania. We grew up in quite a small family unit. my mom and my dad and my sister and I, because mom and dad weren't from Australia, my father doesn't have a lot of family. Later in life, we met our sister. We have a sister who is I think about five years older than us. Dad was married before he and mum met, and, had a child that he never knew. She reached out to us when we were about 25. And she's from, England, but lives in LA, New York. So we flew over and met her when we were about 25. And that changed our family dynamic, I guess, or our family unit. We had a bit of a different upbringing, I guess, in the sense that our parents separated when we were seven. And so then we lived with separated families until—we share-housed in between, we did all sorts of things, moved a lot—and then when we were 14, they got back together again. And they're still together now. So we've sort of experienced what it's like to come from that broken family unit as well as together. There's some sort of novelty about twins or a fascination with twins. And so in a family unit of four, she was just my sister, I guess. But the moment we were in public, we were very, very shy, very self-conscious children. And I think we really struggled with being people who are sort of a novelty for other people, or people who are examined on a daily basis. And, I think that that probably contributed to us feeling pretty unconfident and shy. Because there was a lot of attention drawn to us all the time, and we struggled with that. It's strange because, you know, these things happen when you're a child that from an adult's perspective you think, “oh, that's nothing.” But from a child's perspective, it can actually have huge impacts on the way that you identify yourself or, well—this is speaking for myself—the way that I've identified myself and the way that... issues of self-esteem and this sort of thing. The first memory that I remember was we lived in a house in Tasmania, and there was a woman next door who just thought we were just amazing. She collected dolls and she, she just would come over and “The twins! The twins! The twins!” And she wanted to do some sort of, photo shoot with us. And, you know, I guess from a adult perspective it's like, oh, cute, little twins with dolls all around them. But I found that to be a truly quite traumatic experience. I just, I felt so, exposed and under a magnifying glass and I didn't really understand it either. I was sort of like, why is she obsessed with us? But I just remember feelings of real discomfort, and I suppose really not wanting to be there doing that. Like I really struggled over my life with a lot of identity issues anyway, and moments like that, I suppose is when I first felt really uncomfortable. And so when we were, about 10, we separated and went to different primary schools, because I think mom and dad were trying everything that they could to raise us with our own sense of, individuality. And it's a difficult balance because we really struggled together when we were young. And I think that that presented itself through us fighting a lot and saying that we hated each other and this sort of thing. But I don't think we ever did. I think we actually got along really well as children. So we sort of thought we want to go to different schools because we don't like each other. And then when we did go to different schools at about the age of 10, we both struggled in our own way. Because we suddenly didn't have each other next to us. And I think my sister in particular became probably a little more shy. I dunno, there were positives and negatives. We developed our own friendship groups, which were good. And then over the years they turned into one larger friendship group, which was really a beautiful thing. but it definitely showed us that it was almost just as hard to be separated as it was to be together sometimes. Rachel: Before you separated, you said you were struggling with the constant comparison. Can you talk a little bit about that experience? Emma: I think that the comparisons have changed throughout our life. When we were really young, mum and dad tried to do things to make us different and one was dressing us in different colors. But then over time, I feel like it affected my sense of who I was because I was always dressed in blue—and for some reason, my interpretation of being different was that whatever Lucy liked, I had to like the opposite. And so she liked all the things that I suppose were stereotypically, feminine, like she loved, little horses and fairies and ballerinas and I, from a very young age, was dressed in blue. And I liked dinosaurs and sports and I guess just different things, anything that was opposite to her. And there reached a stage in my life when I realized, I actually think I like the same thing she likes. But that wasn't until about 23. When we were young, the comparisons were who's the naughty one? Who's the good one? Who's the, smart one? Who’s better and who's not? And then as we matured, it became—there were a lot of comparisons with looks. And I think our issue with being compared was that we're we're quite deep thinkers and analytical minds. And it manifested in a really unhealthy way where we just looked at ourselves in a magnifying glass and analyzed every single feature, characteristic, everything about ourselves, and held a lot of weight on what that meant. Lucy had a horrible boyfriend, her first one, and a lot of boys just being young—they would compare immediately our looks. And I suppose I kind of identified myself as the ugly one, which is so terrible. They would analyze, honestly, like the tiniest differences in our boobs or our facial features or our hair or the tiniest things. And I would analyze that and then come to the conclusion that I was ugly. And honestly, that stayed with me through a lot of my young adulthood. I don't think that that we ever would've been compared if I didn't have someone who looked a little bit similar to me. And, maybe with school marks as well. I mean, we, we just weren't competitive in our nature towards each other. We were quite content being different. But then I do remember feeling again, stupid at school because maybe I wouldn't have made as good a grade as her or something like that, which is just so ridiculous. But I guess it's just that—if you don't ever have to compare yourself, then you're just you with your marks. But if you have someone constantly next to you and people are like, “Oh, who got the big mark? Who got this? Oh, she's made it into that team. You didn't,” then it's only human nature to then think, oh, well what does that mean? A lot of those things have, disappeared now because I think that our live paths have gone in slightly different directions and over life you learn that there are hurdles and bumps in different places and there's no point comparing because where one person may have lost at one stage, then another one may pick up at at a different place. I still definitely am used to people comparing our physical appearance constantly. Usually strangers. But it's definitely not what it used to be, and it's not in a way of success or competition or anything like that anymore. Growing up is intense. I think that when we moved schools, I probably was a little more outgoing. but I still feel like I had no idea—and maybe this is the thing, maybe all children at the age of 12 have no idea who they are or what they like—but I think that I became a bit more of a loud, kind of, maybe, carefree kid? I'm not quite sure if it was the same for my sister, but, I feel we are, regardless of whether we're together or apart, I feel like I was born with a sort of sense of responsibility to someone else, like a parent might have to a child. It's a sort of connection, like an unconditional love, but also a responsibility in the sense that if something's happening where she's upset or having a hard time, I feel like that weight bears down on me as well. And maybe that's just because I'm overly empathetic, but I've really struggled with that, especially through being a teenager. I got the feeling that I couldn't be a free child or teenager because I couldn't think about myself. I was always having to think about someone else. And, not because anyone was forcing me to, but because I have this deep, deep, concern or sort of attachment—attachment I think it is—to someone else. I feel like I was born into a, I don't know, an unhealthy relationship. We seemed to be on two opposite ends of a spectrum where, when we were teenagers, Lucy seemed to be pretty sure of what she liked and have a pretty strong sense of her identity in a way. I was down the other end of the spectrum where I had no idea what I liked. I honestly, I couldn't pick something for lunch without seeing what Lucy wanted to get first. Or I couldn't pick a piece of clothing because I only saw the world for her. I didn't know how to see it from my own perspective. Over time, Lucy became quite... she had a lot of issues with depression, and just struggling as some teenagers do, I guess. But I sort of beared that weight so, so heavily on me, and I just couldn't live. I couldn't live. I just, my day-to-day was worrying about her and trying my hardest to make her happy, which of course, you learn over time you can't make anyone else happy. But I was only 16. I would do anything I could to make her happy, and in the process, I basically became a martyr and neglected my own development, my own interests. I, I just couldn't live without her and her being happy. My constant worrying and concern for her—because she sort of feels the same way that I do, in a way—it caused her so much pain because she could see that I was just, this weird shell of a person who was trying so hard to fix her, but she just wanted me to be independent. And if I could have just been independent, then she actually probably would've been fine to work her way out of whatever she was going through. I suppose, when I think about it, I think about couples who've been together for a long time and maybe have developed some unhealthy behavioral patterns, and over time they become so used to these patterns that they don't know how to be—if their partner left them, they would really have to start from scratch. I feel like I was in a relationship like that, but from a very early age when my brain hadn't even fully developed yet. I would clean her room to the finest degree. I would buy her gifts. When we got a bit older into our twenties and I had a job, I would buy her things that I would never buy for myself, you know? But I'd save up and buy these things for Lucy because I felt like they'd just make her happy. So I'd clean and clean and clean and gift and gift and gift and probably try and give advice that I felt would help, which is probably controlling her behaviors as well. So in a way, it's really controlling on one side. In the other side, it was really caring because I just wanted her to be okay. And that was the only way that I really knew how. But of course it ended up suffocating her and making her feel guilty because she was receiving all these things and I wasn't doing anything for myself. I really struggled to be my own person. And so through my twenties I worked really, really hard on trying to discover who I actually was without her. Rachel: What was it like when you were alone? Were you just purely focused on Lucy? Did you ever think about Emma?Emma: No. In fact, when I was about 22, Lucy was the one who sort of encouraged me, but she was just like, you know, you have to start to be your own person. And I felt shame, real shame around it. I could not think of myself as an independent person in the world without feeling a sense of huge embarrassment and yeah, shame, which is bizarre to me now. But if anyone even said that question that you just asked me, how do you feel when you're alone, just with Emma? I would just be so mortified. I just couldn't do it. I really, really struggled to see myself as an individual person in the world. It was probably, a sense of being alone, but also weirdly a sense of being under the magnifying glass, but on my own, without someone beside me. Because even though I struggled with being compared my whole life, I also had someone next to me who I could always bounce off. I shared it with someone. And so the moment that I was left to try and work things out on my own, I felt very unsafe. All very serious. But it was very heavy, heavy feelings when I was younger. And luckily I've worked through that and I don't feel that heavy weight anymore, but it was, it was really difficult. We always got on really well in the sense that we enjoyed all the same things. We played a lot of sport and we did that together. We had friends who we all sort of shared in the same group. But I know that we fought a lot and I know that most of the time it was probably just because we were each trying to constantly maybe control each other or help each other. And it was just this strange balance of really struggling to be together, but really struggling to be without each other as well. In social friend dynamic groups, it was hard at times because we loved having all the same friends and it was really good, but then we would really struggle if for whatever reason we ended up having to be paired off together within friendship groups. It was this feeling of isolation from friends as a pair. I think that we actually did really well at school. We went to a large school, so we went to the same school for high school, but it was a really big school so we were in different classes, had different friendship groups. And so we were able to find that balance that we weren't able to earlier on when we were at different schools, of being able to see each other, be friends with each other, but then also have our own friendship groups to go back to, which was actually really good. Rachel: Do you remember feeling different within your separate space versus your shared space? Did your sense of yourself or your behavior, or your sense of your body change depending on whether or not you were in a space that was shared with your sister? Emma: I don't think it did because I think that even when I was in a space without her, I was always thinking about her. I was always, I never used to sit and... I've heard sometimes twins feel this beautiful freedom when they're away from their twin or this kind of feeling of like, caged in without them. And I think sometimes that happens to one twin and not the other. And I think I definitely fall onto the side of the one that I felt the moment I was away from her, I was still thinking about her all the time and what she might like and what she might need. I'd never sat with myself and as I said, just saw myself in the world as an individual. I just did not know how to do that. So it wasn't something that came into my brain until I was about 22. Rachel: What changed? Emma: Some hard words from my sister and I guess a little bit of a self discovery journey, which, was mainly initiated again by her, and a lot of discomfort for probably two years. And then very slowly, so slowly that I probably can't even put a finger on it, it was like being a child, sort of growing up from the age of 22. I started to actually just stop and look at things and think, okay, I know that Lucy would love that, but would I love it too? It was almost forced from Lucy and out of love, and I'm so, so grateful that she did it. But she, she just started saying, no, you can't do this for me. You can't think about me like that. You have to start seeing yourself instead. I think it actually probably changed though when I did have a relationship, with a boy that truly saw me as me. And so I had someone who would talk to me as Emma and tell me all the things about Emma that were unique or whatever it is. And I think that's probably when I started to shift a little bit into maybe getting a glimpse of seeing myself as me. I did go to a psychologist and tried to explain it and I think, they were like, what is going on here? But even just going through that process of having to sit in so much discomfort next to a stranger and try and talk about this stuff or the way that I saw myself, I think that that slowly unfolded to me being able to continue talking about myself. It gave myself a little bit of freedom to actually just be myself. But it was excruciating, the process. Rachel: I think it's telling that being in a relationship with someone was one of the first opportunities for you to really see yourself reflected as an individual. Did those feelings of shame or mortification come up at all? Emma: When I was in a relationship, I then had another person by my side. And so maybe I still didn't have to think about myself truly as an individual if I had a partner by side. But one thing I do remember is that, for example, any gift that a partner would give me, clothing or anything, I would just be like, “Oh, great, thanks I love it.” And I look back and I'm like, I would've hated that. But I just, I had no idea of what I did like and what I didn't like. I was just, you like blue? Ok cool. I like blue. You like dinosaurs? Yep. I like dinosaurs. And then when we were older, I just didn't have a brain to think for myself. it was obviously there, but I just didn't allow it in at all because it made me feel unsafe. I don't remember feeling that feeling of, embarrassment or that feeling of feeling truly alone within the relationships that I had when I was younger. All I remember is feeling safe with someone else. I was comfortable with someone else and not comfortable on my own. But I've since had a lot of time on my own as a single person, and so I feel like I really worked through that. But that came later. We were living together or we were living in the same town until about the age of probably when I started to be able to do my own thing about the age of 21. I moved away with my boyfriend at the time to the other side of Australia. And from then on, we had pretty much 10 years where we didn't live in the same place. it was good and bad because I would worry about her probably when I did not need to worry about it. But because I might talk to her when she was having a bad day or something like this, I would catastrophize the situation and, and really, really worry about her. But in saying that, I think that was probably a crucial, a really important time in our lives. Cause we had 10 years of being in the world as our own people. I do remember having fun, but I remember also feeling a big. weight of worry. Like I still with me carried this sense of responsibility and, you know, we would still talk on the phone every single day, probably twice a day. Sometimes I wonder if, yeah, maybe that is the same type of feeling that parents have when a child leaves home and you have to go back to living your own life. But you're constantly thinking about, if you were to talk on the phone to your child and maybe they were having a bad day, maybe there's that same feeling of attachment. I'm not sure because I'm not a parent, but it feels so, so deep. I even remember when I was probably, I was in preschool, so we would've been three or four and I remember feeling very exposed and sitting in a playground with her, but feeling worried for her. Rachel: Which one of you is older? Emma: Me. Rachel: How much older are you? Emma: I think we're about 45 minutes apart. So quite a, a while. Maybe I was worried about her still in the womb. I don't know. I was always asked the question, who's older? Who's older, who's older? So I knew that I was older and maybe that that developed a sense of responsibility. I sometimes wonder, how would it have been if I wasn't told that I was older? Or how would it have been if we weren't told that we were even identical? Maybe that would've changed things. I'm not sure. I feel like I've painted a really sad, bad picture, but it was actually—there are a lot of good things to it as well. But I do think that I have grown up really truly feeling that it's a blessing and a curse. It's not felt like I'm the luckiest person in the world to have a twin beside me. I've felt like it has caused a lot of discomfort and a very heavy weight on me throughout my life. And so it annoys me when people are like, “Oh, you're so lucky. You're a twin. I would love to be a twin. Oh my god, if I had twins, I'd dress them the same.” And I'm like, “Oh, absolutely not.” Which I think has sometimes made me feel inadequate as well because I'm like, oh, I should be loving this, you know, it seems to be, or maybe it's just made me feel isolated. I felt quite isolated because I feel like I don't fit the, stereotype probably of what being a twin should be. And then, that leads to guilt because I'm like, I love my sister so, so much, but I also hate being a twin. One of my good friends has identical twin sisters who are three years younger than us. And I feel like their experience of being a twin is so different to ours. And I think a lot comes down to personality type. Lucy and I have a similar personality type and unfortunately it's just not really conducive with being two people who look the same and walk around in the world the same. So I think that we have struggled in places where I definitely know that these two haven't, and I'm sure that they've probably struggled in places where we have had no issue. We've never had issues with competitiveness or, sometimes I hear people talk about that sort of stuff. It's never been an issue for us. I think we've always had each other's interests at hand and, and really wanted the best for each other. If she was to succeed and I wasn't, there'd be a little bit of feeling disappointed, but I'd at least be happy that she had made it. It's a strange dynamic of, if I was to succeed in an area that she wasn't able to, I would be the one holding a whole lot of sadness for her. And maybe guilt that I was the one who was succeeding. So, I think sometimes the burden is put on the one that succeeds rather than the one who doesn't. Rachel: So I know that you're both in the healthcare profession. Can you talk a bit about how you found your way there, and what that was like given you were struggling with knowing yourself and what you wanted? Emma: I was always drawn to the work that I do. From about the age of 14, I, was like, I'd like to be a paramedic. In saying that, I do sometimes look back now and I think, what if I'd felt like I had access to being able to enjoy other things? I don't know that I would've chosen this path or been so set on it because there are other things that I enjoyed as well. But I didn't feel like they were accessible to me. SoI'm not sure if my reason for being so set on where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do was because I truly knew what I wanted, or whether it was based as well, because there were certain things that I would steer clear of because I knew that they were Lucy's domain. I mean, it's so hard, isn't it? Who else has to think so deeply about the decisions in their life that they've made and the paths that they've chosen and why it could be and why not? Like, consider everything. Why did I do that? Is it because it's been compared? Because my whole life has just been analyzed. I guess that's how it's felt. I've constantly made my decisions based to some degree on another person's. I mean it's interesting that we did both end up in healthcare because again, I think, well, if we were separated at birth, maybe we would be doing exactly the same thing. Rachel: What's really interesting is the studies that show that when twins are separate, they actually behave more alike than when they're together. Emma: Yep. I totally understand that. Because they have the freedom to just like what they'd like without comparing it to whether it's the right thing or the wrong thing, or should be the same, or shouldn't be the same, you know? I think we were both very creative children, very creative. And then as I grew up I thought, creativity is Lucy's thing. And so I never really went there. And since being an adult, she's been the one who's pointed out, actually you are really good at this you know, you are creative in this way or you are feminine in this way. And so I think that I've developed a sense of creativity within myself and also a real sense of, my feminine side as well over time. Rachel: You later in life met your half sister. I know in our earlier conversation you had mentioned really longing for another sibling. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about that feeling and then what it was like to actually form a relationship with another sibling. Emma: That was life changing really, for me and Lucy. I think growing up as a twin, I was aware of the fact that our relationship was different to a normal sibling relationship. And I think I did just yearn for, a sibling relationship that didn't feel so intense. I felt like if there were three, everyone would be their own person. And honestly, that's how it felt. The moment we flew over to America and we met her and it was so beautiful because, I mean, she was a, essentially a stranger. We'd been emailing and so we knew about one another. And from the moment we saw her, it was like, it was just like the missing piece. And sometimes I think, oh, I just wish I could have grown up with her there as well. Because she immediately sees us as individuals, and so she will direct a question at Emma or Lucy and it's like all of a sudden we're on the same level. It felt like balance and, and a suddenly a bit of freedom. Rachel: How would you say that now your relationship and your identity as a twin, even though it's been complicated throughout your life‚— what's your outlook right now? Emma: I feel incredibly lucky to have, a person in my life who knows me so well, and I'm able to now enjoy a little more the things that I suppose everyone growing up told me I should be enjoying. Like having a best friend, having someone who's always there for you and all this sort of stuff. I really value that now and I'm able to be more comfortable with it. In saying that, I still bear weight, I will always, I guess I just bear the weight of that relationship and, my... just deep, deep empathy towards her. Honestly, if someone said to me, would you prefer to not be a twin? I probably would say yes. And that comes out of love for her as well, because I think we probably both would. Yeah, I love her and I love being her person in the world, but I still feel like I'd probably be happier if, if she was my sister and I didn't have the weight of being an identical twin. Rachel: This is a question I like to ask at the end. When do you feel most like yourself? Emma: Probably when I am with my partner. Or my very, very good friends, which include Lucy. In a place where I feel, that I'm very present. So whether that is on a bush walk or listening to live music or something like that. But in a place where I feel like there's absolutely no external attention on me. Lucy, Emma’s twin, was also interviewed. Listen here. <img width="640" height="725" width_o="640" height_o="725" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/47eb5fb3d4cb40d6ebbc9e9594a3b3302c35f11cfd0ca1e342d5cd50ec23eef8/Lake_Emma.jpeg" data-mid="185225341" border="0" data-scale="77" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/640/i/47eb5fb3d4cb40d6ebbc9e9594a3b3302c35f11cfd0ca1e342d5cd50ec23eef8/Lake_Emma.jpeg" /> Previous&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Next https://likeness.ing/Lance-T Tue, 25 Jul 2023 22:31:44 +0000 Likeness https://likeness.ing/Lance-T Lance T.Themes: brothers, sports, competition, mental illness, estrangement &nbsp; &amp;lt;a href="https://smithmeade.bandcamp.com/track/interview-with-lance-t"&amp;gt;Interview with Lance T. by Rachel Smith&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;This interview has been condensed and edited. Rachel: Lance, can you introduce yourself for the recording in whatever way you feel comfortable. Lance: I'm Lance Thornton. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson. I am 34, about to turn 35. I have two little children, two years old, three years old. I am a metal salesman, so I sell raw metal material. And my wife, my lovely wife, is from the south and she takes care of our kiddos at home. So I live the dream. I come from what I consider a big family. There were five of us, five boys, so, I was the youngest. My twin was four minutes older than me, and then my oldest brother was six years older. So we had five kids in a matter of six years. Because they were all boys, the house was stereotypical testosterone-driven, just kind of competition and everyone trying to one-up each other for attention and anything you can really think of when you think of brotherly, competing. The interesting part about all that is we were really raised by my mother. So five boys raised by a strong female, who was a Phys Ed teacher. So, growing up it was just constant chaos. She was gone before we left the house. She was home after we got back cause she would coach. So it was really boys raising boys from a, a strong female lead. but a lot of fun having all those brothers close in age, obviously having a twin. It was someone just like you, your age, your interest, to a certain point, growing up. So, I did have a best friend in terms of having a twin when I was young, when I was much younger. But, that that doesn't hold tight. And having all your brothers, you tend to navigate and follow certain brothers down certain paths. So, as I grew up having three older brothers, you know, it was selectively picking which one to follow, which one to be, try and emulate, and become, which I think is a unique experience being a twin, because I never wanted to be like my twin. It was the opposite of always wanting to not be like my twin and be my own person. I don't have a lot of vivid memories from the time I was, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6 years old. I just don't have that in my head. But what I do have are pictures and videos. So when I look back at those, it was Luke, and Lance. Anywhere he went, I went, anywhere I went, he went. We shared the same room, we were dressed the same way. When we went to school, we had the same lunch boxes. So in terms of, having a best friend, he was always there, whether I liked it or not, Luke was my counterpart, always there. The brothers were separated. They had their own rooms, they had their own activities. If I had an activity, Luke had an activity. So it was always me and him vs. the rest of the household. So me wanting to be like my brothers—Kyle and Brad, my older brothers were swimming, I saw that and said, I wanna swim. And then Luke didn't wanna swim, but he had to come along. So Luke now was a swimmer because I wanted to swim. And so when I would go to practice, it didn't make sense logistically speaking to leave Luke at home. So, it was like a forced best friendship of no matter where I was or where Luke was, the other was there. You couldn't say Luke or Lance without saying Luke and Lance. I don't think I had that sense of independence to say, you know, “I don't want to do the same thing as him.” I think it was just, an understanding of we're gonna be on the same T-ball team, we're gonna play soccer together. From a school standpoint, once we got into elementary school, at least during the day, we were separate. And so we had separate friends. But when we look back at old videos, all of our birthday parties were the same. It was, we're having a dual birthday party, so it didn't matter whose friends were who, it's the same birthday party, it's gonna be all those kids in one area. I think it was a natural progression of we understood that yeah, we had to do all the same things cause, you know, there's only two parents and five kids and a million activities. So it was just easier for us to always do the same stuff. But as we got older, it naturally started occurring where from a—and I hate to always go back to sports, but sports was life back then—we naturally divided ourselves as individuals going on different sport pathways. And that started as young as, I wanna say maybe 10 or 11. So probably up until 10 years old, it was Luke and Lance, all the same stuff. But once Little League started modified sports in seventh grade,&nbsp; that's when I got to say, well, I don't wanna play baseball. I wanna run cross country. And that was where my mom had to say, well, okay, I mean, at this point we can't keep doing what we were doing. There was never a conversation, me demanding independence or wanting that differently. Because we shared a room until my gosh, probably like 13, 13 years old. We were in the same room. So it's just the way it was, it was the circumstance and we had to deal with it. But once our oldest brother moved out of the house, we got our own rooms, can do completely separate lifestyles, different TV stations. And at that point my mom worked so much and my dad worked so much that there was no supervision. So the older we got it was just do whatever you wanted. So, that was where the breaking really started to happen. Rachel: What happened when you started making separate friends? How did that shift your understanding of your relationship with Luke? Lance: I don't think it was both of us wanting to necessarily force a splinter and go different ways. I think it was the fact that we actually were two completely different people. And so as, as we got older and had totally different interests, the friend groups just naturally happened. but what's unique about it is, even though we had different friends, we were still linked within our friend groups to the other person. So we went on our different pathways. I pursued my interests, he pursued his interests. But no matter how far apart we were, it was always even within your specific friend group, "Oh, did you hear what Luke did," or, I'm sure he heard the same. I can't confirm that, but, "Oh, did you hear what happened to Lance?” So, I think we definitely got to explore our own personalities and our own likes and interests as we got older and hung out with different crowds, but we were never able to fully shake the, your twin is also you, so what happens to him affects you. You know, if someone wants to know where Luke was, "Lance, where's Luke?" I don't know. We didn't come to school together that day. You know, don't bring it to me. I don't care at all. As that went on, I think in high school, it became more protective in making sure that his actions didn't reflect negatively on me as I grew a confidence about me, or was trying to build up my self-esteem. You know, if I heard something like, oh, Luke got in a fight at school. I'd have to say, well, what, why, what happened? Who was saying what, what was the cause of it? Do I have to get involved? I was constantly worried or embarrassed that Luke was gonna do something stupid. Unfair to him, you know, my thinking in that. But that was where I was. It was, how do I protect myself, my image, my&nbsp; worth as a person, if he were to get in trouble, if he were to get suspended. And so it was always negative. It was never positive. And even if it was positive, you know, when the baseball team went to States and made it to the semi-finals, that almost created a jealousy, right? Like, oh, well, why is Luke getting all these headlines? I'm going to States too. You know, I'm in a different sport, but I'm going. So it was a competition of who gets headlines. If they get headlines, how does it affect me? But that was the culture we grew up in. Having older brothers who were also successful in their own right—and it's my own Thornton story—but when I went to science class and Mr. Sandhop was like, “Oh, how's your brother doing?” You know, so you are only known from your brothers being there before you, and now you have shoes to fill. And then Luke, if he did anything to set me back or devalue what I was doing, it was a pain in the butt. So the dynamic shifted from middle school being, I just wanna be me. Leave me alone. I don't care what he's doing, to high school being, what is he doing? Why is he doing it? Isn't he thinking about me? (Laughs) So it, went downhill the older we got, to being very selfish, of how do I one-up or how do I get a better headline, or all of that. And at that point, when we got to high school, we didn't talk. We weren't talking at all. Just because we were different and we had nothing, nothing in common, outside of just being twins, being brothers. I couldn't even tell you about what he was doing because at that point, we separated—in our house in Hastings, we had three stories, a basement, a middle, and then an upper. And when my oldest brother left, he moved into the room next to me in the top part of the house. And then when our second oldest brother Kyle moved out to college, I then moved all the way into the basement. And so from the time I was 13, it was a level of separation between the two of us in the household. So when we would go to school, whether it was one of our brothers driving us or we walked there, there was no interaction. And when we got to school, we did our own things. He went to his practices. I went to my practices. When we got home, if I was in the middle floor, he'd be upstairs. If I was downstairs, he's in the middle floor. So, interaction-wise, it was as little as possible. I would get up, get my breakfast, he would sleep in later. As we got older, I would then leave him because he wasn't up in time. I wouldn't even wake him up. I would just, I'm driving to school and he is going to freak out about it. And so it was just, we didn't interact. And if we did interact, it was because we had to, or we were fighting about who was better at something. So it was two strangers living as brothers at that point. I mean, that's, that's where it was. It had deteriorated to just, I don't want to go in his room, near his room, talk to him, because it would inevitably turn physical in some nature, especially as teenage boys. You know, the amount of fights I've had over the years in a physical manner with him were, were, it was insane. (Laughs) It was, it was a lot. So, day-to-day was, I have no clue what he was doing because I did my thing and I stayed away from him and he did his thing and stayed away from me. The scenarios I described with Luke being separated and just competing on any level you could think of, test scores, grades, SATs, sports—it was the same way with the brothers, just not as much of a personal aspect of it. It was always a competition, within the household of, okay, what's the next bar? Who set the higher bar? How's the other person gonna beat it? How do you win the attention of Mom and Dad? Whose sports game are they gonna go to? So the household was purely set up as just, a constant competition, just a wrestling match, between everyone. But when it became me and Luke, it was much more personal. With Luke, no matter what it was—is Luke dating this girl? Did he skip this class? Did did a teacher yell at him? You know, it all came right back to me. our competition was a lot more of, hey, stop screwing up my life. And it's funny thinking back cause you're like, hey, you're 15, you don't have a life. (Laughs) But that was all we knew and that's all we cared about. So the household was set up where that's the way it is. So no one ever thought it was wrong. You know, me and my brother always at each other's throats. It was just, well, that's the Thornton family and that's how they act. Just craziness that as a parent now, I'm like, no, that, that can never happen. (Laughs) &nbsp; Rachel: Do you remember at what point you started to think okay, what about just Lance? Where does Lance fit into the world and how do I find that person? Lance: Obviously going to college, when you leave home, it allows you an opportunity to reinvent yourself. But, I also was seeking identity very, very, intently. So I had no idea who I was in high school. I don't know who does, but when I went to college, I lost the brand I had in high school, which was the athletic kid. I, to my knowledge, I didn't have like enemies, right? I was kind of friendly with everyone. And going to college, I lost that. So I was gonna be a swimmer. I knew that I was joining a swim team, but what I latched onto immediately was, one of my older brothers who was, quote-unquote straight edge at the time, and had a straight edge tattoo. So I get to college and I go to my first college party as a swimmer. I had no identity, so I immediately just said, well, I'll be like Kyle. And then I was labeled a straight edge kid. I went out and got tattoos. So all through college I was playing, the same, I'm just gonna act like one of my brothers and take traits and mishmash 'em together. So I don't think it was honestly until probably 23 years old, when I left college, I graduated, I went into the Air Force and that was when I moved down south. I was completely separated from the family, completely separated from my college friends at that time, obviously high school friends. So I didn't find myself or start thinking about who I am and where I fit in until I was almost mid-twenties, which, I mean, that's a pretty long time—to go through five years of school, get two bachelor degrees, then say, you know what? I don't wanna be a teacher. I'm gonna totally do something different, and then join the Air Force. You know, it was like, I need to start fresh. I need to totally reinvent who I am. And that's what I did. And, so it wasn't until I was living in, you know, Biloxi, Mississippi where no one knew me. I had my first beer, when I was 23, and no one was like, “Oh, wait a minute, your family doesn't drink. Why are you...,” you know, it wasn't that. I think that was the first step to me being independent and on my own. And no one knew who Luke was. No one knew I was a twin. To this day, I don't tell people I'm a twin unless it's relevant to the conversation. I was down South and I said, well, that's not far enough. And then I moved to Arizona, to start a family, you know, get married, start, start having kids. But full circle. Now I start thinking about my kids and them being close to their cousins, cause now all my family has kids. And so, I moved as far away from my family as I could to become the person I am. But now that I've found myself, in theory, I feel like I know more of who I am now and my purpose, now it's, oh, I kind of wanna reconnect with the family. And bring my kids to meet their cousins and grow up—scarily—grow up the way I grew up. But going to college allowed me to completely separate from Luke, it was a restart of, okay, I don't have parents here, I don't have Luke here. I can, I can really do whatever I want. No one's watching, no one's reporting back to my family. There were positives that came out of that in terms of my relationship with Luke. My other brothers, I didn't stay in very good contact with them, but with Luke, when I went to school and he went to school, we did keep in touch in terms of how sports were going. So he went and played football and then I was swimming and my mom would watch him play football and come watch me swim. And she'd tell us about the other. And, you know, I would Facebook message him or text him, you know, to see how things were. So because we were separated, it was more, of like a shallow level of interaction at that point where we were able to just be friendly and just reach out to each other to be like, “Hey, how's college? How's football? How'd the game go? Mom said this.” So it was really, just a very, very shallow level of communication, but it was the most positive it had been in a long time. So when you cut out all the jealousy and all the emotions and you actually put space between us, it was like, okay, we're just brothers who were separated by going to different schools. So I grew apart from my family as a whole, but I also mended a certain level of communication with Luke himself. So I think it did take a large geographical separation to allow us to have just normal human conversations. But, with that being said, when we would come home for Christmas or summer break, it all just went right—because he would go to his friend group, I'd go to my friend group, and we would fight in the house and it all just went back to that brotherly competition, which again is why the longer life went on, the more I separated from the family completely because I didn't want family drama anymore. So if I lived far away I didn't have to come home. In high school we would have those moments— Luke and I played football together, junior and senior year. Football was the one thing we did together. But Luke had done it a lot longer than I did, and I only did it because I wanted to show that I could be better at football than he was, and starting late and all that. But there was, it might have been a playoff game senior year where, it was just a game where Luke and I, on defense played very well. We kind of played together, to help the team do well and at the end of the game when we won—it was a big deal at the time that Hastings won a playoff game cause we were terrible—but it was a moment of me and Luke celebrating together and, and I think we probably hugged and that was a moment of like, wow, we don't ever do that. We don't ever show emotion of a positive nature to each other. So sports was able to break that down and be like, hey, we were on same team and we won together. And that I think about randomly. Just be like, wow, there was a time where me and him totally dropped our shields and you know, embraced the moment and had happiness together. But since then, it was always moments of bad news that kind of dropped our hatred. After freshman year of college, I was living in Manhattan doing an internship and I don't know what he was doing, but he was going through a hard time and I remember he called me and we had a real human interaction, and it was a reflection conversation of high school. And it was one of those where he was sharing that, you know, I was always better, not, not in those words, but I was always the favorite or better in sports and smarter and went to a better school. And it was one of those crushing moments of like, wow, this is, this is my brother, this is my twin, who, we grew up together. And me giving him acknowledgements and praise back saying, hey, none of that's true. That's just in your mind. And here are the reasons why you are a good person. Here are the the reasons why you are successful. And yeah, you may be going through a hard time, but look at me. I'm living with five roommates in Manhattan. I make 12 bucks an hour at an internship. And it was just a way of us breaking down egos and being like, okay, we're people. And it was, it was emotional and, and that was a conversation I haven't forgotten.So there were moments of us truly showing love and appreciation. The issue was it was short-lived, right? So, a week or two later, he's back to him and I'm back to me, and we don't talk. And when we do talk to other people, we don't have good things to say about the other person. It's so hard letting go of the past. And so it was never, well, we're gonna build on that foundation. It was just, well, we'll talk in a month. I'll see you when I come home after the semester. And by then we were two totally different people, even more so, and there were things that I would then hate that he was doing when I saw him in person. And I'd be like, well, I don't want to hang out with you. Go away. (Laughs) Luke struggled, With a lot of depression and bipolar. He had a lot of of things that were out of his control that really came to light much further down. Which is, is tough to think about because you have this teenage boy who does have a brother his age and we grew up together and he had things inside of him that he could not control, but no one really understood. And you go back thinking, wow, if if medication could have came earlier, if diagnosis could have came earlier, we could have had a totally different relationship. We were both living at home right after college. I was waiting to go into the Air Force and Luke was working in Yonkers or somewhere. And he had, you know, an episode, if you will. I don't know what you want to call it, but I mean, just a really bad scene, with my mother there and me having to intervene physically. And it was one of those like, oh my God, this could become a really bad situation. Like this could actually become a, you know, someone dies, right? I mean, these are grown adults physically going after each other, me in a restraining mode. But I have a love of him, especially in deep, dark times because we grew up together, where my job and my role during that interaction was purely to just restrain him and let the situation die by me just holding him down, not causing physical harm, just doing everything I can to not let this escalate to a point where bad, bad things were gonna happen. And looking back, I'm glad I didn't go into an anger mode of like, screw you, I'm gonna hurt you, because it could have went horribly wrong. There were a lot of cops that showed up at the Thornton house that night in Hastings, little old Hastings. But I remember after all that happened, I went down to the room because he had to leave the house that night and we talked and we were like, Hey, the—what's going on? What, you know, what can I do to help? This stuff can't happen. And so it was this pure physical blowup that resulted in two humans in a very low point just talking and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. So, I think that's—when things got the worst, was when I would push past all that other crap and say, well, this is my brother. And I need to look out for him. But the next day everything comes back and I don't like him. I'm not talking to him. All the shit he just put me through last night. Dark places can bring people together, but time will just separate 'em right back. Because of all the bad things that happened along the way, everything was too late. It was so hard to just wipe clean and say, well, I forgive all the shit that went down as we grew up, attributing it to a disease. It was always an up and down constant, up and down. And those peaks and those valleys got larger as we got older. It was very petty in the beginning when we were teenagers, but as you become 20 year olds and 30 year olds, it is just much higher, much more at stake, where I'm not gonna put my kids on the line to reestablish a relationship that, has been broken for 15 years. Rachel: It's been 10 plus years, you said since you've really had a relationship. Is that right? Lance: So I joined the Air Force when I was 23, and I think he joined the Marine Corps, maybe a year into my, enlistment. And I do believe I spoke to him when he was going to bootcamp and then after bootcamp. But I would probably say by the time I was 25, there was no relationship there. He had more issues going on. And when I went to the Air Force, that was when I was done with family. That was when I was, this is my life now. I have to figure this out. And never went home since. So it was probably 25 years old where I was like, I'm done with that. If people mention him, fine, I don't care. I'm not gonna ask about how he's doing. I'm not gonna call him up. And he may have tried to contact, but, at that point, it was almost like banishment from the whole family because of all the issues that were going on, and I was steadfast on, that's it. I'm done. I'm not getting involved in any of the drama. I was even sick of talking my mom off ledges of, you know, that's her baby, that's her son that's going through problems, But, it became enabling in that I can't yell at my mom anymore for enabling my twin for his behaviors. And so I even shut that, like I'm not talking to anybody about any of it. So yeah, it's probably been coming up on 10 years now, I haven't had a conversation. And unless someone gives him my number or something, but I don't think—I would be shocked if he ever called. Shocked. &nbsp; Rachel: Is it something that you think about? Lance: With my kids a little bit, because they're Irish twins, so they share the same age for nine days a year. So I think about how they're growing up in their interactions and, and making sure that it's positive and giving them an opportunity hopefully to be better brothers than I was. But it's, yeah, it doesn't pop into my head a lot. Now that I have kids, it's just, I wish things were different. I think it's a shame. As I grew older and understood more, I think mental health—I think about that more, about how unfair it is that we grew up together in the exact same environment with the exact same tools, the exact same advantages of growing up in Hastings. But he was dealing with mental health issues and I wasn't. But you can't repair that. You just, you can't repair it because he's not in a place to repair that. And, I don't know, maybe he is—that's the other side is, there's always a doubt of like, well, maybe his life is better now. But I'm not opening my life to it. (Laughs) If things are good, leave them how they are. Don't poke the bear. So yeah, I think through my boys, is the most of my thought with Luke. Looking at old pictures and trying to see if my kids look anything like I looked and there was a point in time where my youngest looked like Luke, when he was probably a year old. He just had features and it was scary looking at potentially my twin as a young, young kid. And he grew out of that. But, yeah, now it's just more about, okay, how can I give my kids what they need, and if they have mental health issues, I wanna be able to help help them. So I've definitely stepped into a totally different role in my life where I'm not trying to mend my relationships. I'm trying to now just foster their growth and development and, I guess as human beings, that's what we do. But, yeah, it's sad for me to, to talk about it and say, well, I've given up on it, but I, I mean, it's just not a priority. Rachel: Does it worry you thinking about moving back to be closer to your family, that it would be poking the bear a little bit? Lance: Yes. Only because I know how disturbing mental health I illnesses can be. Luke lived homeless for over a year. So he has put himself in horrible situations, and those are only the ones I know, you know. And me moving back terrifies me every day because, I would be moving back and basically living in my home that I grew up in. And as my mom gets older, taking care of her. So again, you talk about having gifts in life and opportunities that others don't. It would be amazing for my kids to have that opportunity, be close to grandma, be close to cousins, but it also terrifies me of, Luke knows where that house is. He knows where the key is to get through the side door. So, yeah, I think if somehow he was not in a good place and hears, oh, Lance moved back and is living in the house, you know, Who knows? It's, yeah, that's always a scary, shameful thought. But, I've chosen a life of I need to move on and do my thing and raise my kids. How Luke plays into that? No idea. No clue. I don't know the last time he was in Hastings. You know, my story specifically is, one of: it could have gone the complete opposite way. We coulda grew up as two best friends being competitive with each other, but, outwardly-facing saying it's me and you versus the world. But he just, he had mental health illnesses that continued to get worse as he got older. So I don't think it's a woe-is-me story, I think it's more of a PSA of how devastating it can be, when you grow up with opportunity, but it's taken away from you. So, you know, my story and my story with my twin is that it's just, it was undiagnosed for so long. And by the time help was there, it was, it was a struggle. Rachel: I have one final question for you, which is, when do you feel most like yourself? Lance: Oh my goodness, that's such a hard question. Because having kids, I feel like I feel most like myself when I am either with a very close friend, or only with my wife. It's when I'm separate, when I'm not dad, when I don't have to be dad. And when I'm not around family—family is just walking eggshells type deals. But, I think, I think that's when I feel most like myself, is when I'm with a really close friend where I can say and do anything or with my wife, with no one else around. Those are the moments I do cherish. Those are the moments I seek out. When I don't have the responsibility and labels. <img width="1024" height="1006" width_o="1024" height_o="1006" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/09d3452b61cf920d9d0fc39b6b38907823c92664a0e1456b9111d6f3a42f7907/DALLE-2023-07-26-14.00.34---cookbook-photograph-of-two-apple-from-1972--no-text.png" data-mid="186429186" border="0" data-scale="85" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/09d3452b61cf920d9d0fc39b6b38907823c92664a0e1456b9111d6f3a42f7907/DALLE-2023-07-26-14.00.34---cookbook-photograph-of-two-apple-from-1972--no-text.png" /> Previous&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Next https://likeness.ing/A-G Fri, 25 Aug 2023 16:13:32 +0000 Likeness https://likeness.ing/A-G A.G.Themes: sisters, ballet, childhood, scoliosis, joy, creative writing, friendship, collaboration &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="https://smithmeade.bandcamp.com/track/interview-with-ag"&amp;amp;amp;gt;Interview with AG by Rachel Smith&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt; This interview has been condensed and edited. All references to specific names and universities have been removed and/or replaced with a 1-second sound gap. Rachel: Can you just introduce yourself for the recording in whatever way makes you feel comfortable? A: I'm from Washington, DC. I am an artist. I practice music, dance, and writing in particular. And I'm overall devoted to joy and like, the pursuit of happiness in the truest sense. So I'm not driven by money or anything else. (Laughs) Just joy. I was born in Washington, DC in a hospital, the name I cannot remember. And it was 57 minutes after my sister came out. Despite the fact that we are the same age, I'm definitely the baby and she is definitely the older sister and I feed into that dynamic. And I love it. I, I personally do. Growing up she got in trouble for things that I would do and I would get away with a lot of things. And even today she has certain responsibilities that I don't have because of the 57 minutes. Which is crazy. But both of our parents are also the eldest siblings among their brothers and sisters, so I think that, they felt that dynamic existed and they treated us like we were regular siblings. I cut her hair when we were like three years old. I just grabbed scissors and I was like, sit here, I'm gonna braid your hair and then I'm gonna cut it. And she let me. And then my mom found out and my sister got in trouble for letting me cut her hair. And I'm sure I got a talking to, but my mom was more concerned that my sister sat there and let me do what I wanted to do her hair in that way. If we were ever at sleepovers or things like that, she was sort of in charge of making sure that I was taken care of and that we sort of left the house in a good order and that we weren't running amuck. She was maybe sort of like a tiny stand-in mom when our mom wasn't there, just to make sure that we were sort of, I was behaving, she was behaving, Rachel: How did that make you feel, because you're actually the same age? A: We actually are the same age. (Laughs) I never thought about it until we got older. I really do like being the baby. It has so many advantages and it's—parts of it are absolutely selfish and I realize that too, getting older. But I appreciate that there was some differentiation between our roles as siblings. Cause I don't know that every twin is afforded the older sibling, younger sibling dynamic. We're still working through it today to create more equality in terms of responsibility. But, yeah, she was always in terms of like, logistics, she had to handle stuff like that more. And no one really expected me to handle logistics and figure out what time we're gonna leave a sleepover and things like that and make sure I was ready when our mom was there at 12 or whatever the case might be. There is a little bit of personality attached to it as well, because I think she, she definitely seems to handle logistics better. Maybe not even better. She just handles them. And then I was allowed to be maybe more of a creative person who I think even in our creative partnerships today, like fast forwarding to the last few years, when we create dances together, for example, and we are choreographing in the same space, she's the one sending out emails to our dancers and setting rehearsal times. And I'm the one who's sort of responsible, this is unspoken, but for creating a good portion of the choreography in the actual space, and then she refines and adds flourishes and things like that. I think our parents did a really good job at treating us as individuals, but I would say the rest of the world reminded us that we were twins. and I think the rest of the world treating us as twins, that's when things got complicated. But never in our own house. It was the outside world. I think most twins have experienced sort of being treated like animals at a zoo where you're in a display case wherever you go, especially when you're younger. People feel like they have access to you or that you're, just by the fact that there's two people who share a face in their eyes, they can come up to you and touch your hair or make you stand next to each other and scan your body and do things that you would never imagine doing to any other person. They would, you know, point out differences, which we got used to, and then make really, you know, terrible corny jokes about, oh, this is bigger on you, or you have acne and she doesn't, you know, things like that. So I think we got used to sort of navigating that gracefully. Especially when we were dancing together, people, teachers in particular, loved to look at the differences between us, not only as physical dancers, but as people, and then would particularly use those differences against me. And it became interesting to see how people would say, why can't—quite literally said—I think I was maybe nine years old, and the teacher said, “Why can't you just do it like your sister did it?” And that was the first time that I'd heard that statement. And it didn't shock me. And I wasn't upset at I_____ but I, everyone else in the class was like—we went to the locker rooms afterwards and they were like, I can't believe he said that. and I was like, just processing. And then it continued sort of to happen in different ways where people were like, “Why can't you attack it like she does? Why don't you have as much spice or like fire that she does?” And several teachers said this to me like, you know, unprompted entirely, even if we were in different classes, but they had us both as students and I just—it was painful to be compared to someone who I love so dearly. And I thought we both had things to offer, but they clearly just wanted two bodies who were the exact same. So they didn't want to embrace the fact that we are different people. They just wanted a replica of one who was doing it with, they liked it the best. And that was hard for me to accept. The lovely thing about the ballet world is that it is sort of inherently abusive and obviously very toxic for many reasons, but teachers get away with creating the worst power dynamics you could imagine. So there was no space for me to speak up, especially as a kid, you really are there to do what they ask you to do. and that was understood from the very beginning and anything else, you just would get kicked out. The adults got away with so many things looking back, I could never imagine doing to other adults or let alone children. So in the ballet world, teachers were hard on me, but then I had certain teachers who really saw me for me and sort of praised me for the different things I had to offer that others in the class couldn't. And that was really, it was obviously very validating, but it was nourishing for me because there were people who saw the sort of more water or softer or more expressive sides of what I did that wasn't all fire and sort of in the front of the room all the time. And they saw the merit in that. In ballet in particular. If you're not the prima, you're the core and as the core everyone has to look the same. And because we not only looked the same, but we also were sort of being trained to be core dancers, I think if they see one dancer who's doing it right, they want everyone else to. But that magnifies and is like further emphasized when you actually have a twin in the room. Rachel: Was this kind of comparison also happening outside of ballet? A: No, which is good. We both played music growing up. I played cello and I_____ played violin. And even though they were string instruments, they were completely different worlds. And to be quite honest, I had like a certain degree of natural ability on the cello that I took for granted. So I was, I knew that I was good at it, and I would go into auditions knowing that I was going to nail it, and then I would, and it wasn't the same in ballet, it was completely different. but our instruments were so different. And then in high school, she just stopped playing the violin altogether and moved to the drums. And our worlds were entirely different so no one could even try to compare us. I was just sort of always nervous in ballet class and super anxious and I just, I mean they had worked really hard to make sure that everyone in the class knew that they were not talented, so that you would constantly like, be sweating through your entire leotard. And you're just a workhorse for years and you just spend like five days a week in the studio convinced that you're terrible, dedicating all your time to trying to convince the people at the head of the room that you deserve to be there. And then of course with being compared to I_____, it was just painful. It was painful the entire time, but I didn't think that it was strange, so I didn't talk about it. And it was a lot of anxiety there. And then when it came to music, it was completely different because I, I actually knew that I was good and people had told me that I was so, I didn't doubt my ability. But I also wasn't practicing as much. Like I didn't seek to be in an orchestra or be a first cellist. I was comfortable knowing that at least I could do one thing well, and that most people in this arena agreed I could do it well. Thank God, you know, thank God for that. But I do, I do remember we always try to make our dad say things about us like, we'd just try to get him to note, to verbally note the differences between us, because he goes to great lengths to treat us the exact same. I mean, every morning when he would make us hot chocolate in the winter, we would come into the kitchen and he would be at eye level with the cups and pouring in each cup to make sure that he didn't give one of us a drop more than the other. And it was very sweet. But the running joke is we'd always be like, tell me you love me more than her or tell, just any, just say anything that lets me know that you can see the difference between us. And one day I'd worn him out and he sort of jokingly but very sincerely said, “Okay, okay, okay. When it comes to music, you have more natural ability, but she works harder.” And I just was like, thank you for saying it. Like it's true. No one's offended. And he was horrified that he said it. But it was one of the best, gratifying moments for me personally because I was like, yes, we're different people. Yes, we're different. You're absolutely right. I'm obnoxious about my natural ability. And she works really, really hard at it. And so I think if we had a very different relationship when it came to music and then later to writing. You know, we both started out in poetry, but I moved to fiction partly because I didn't wanna be in competition with her. I didn't wanna be applying to the same competitions and awards and things like that. And it was a relief, as hard as it was to switch genres. It was a relief to be in a different world. I had different responsibilities as a writer. We weren't doing the same thing. And there was safety in that too. Rachel: So your parents worked really hard to treat you equally. Which as you said is really kind of amazing and impressive in some ways. What are some of the other feelings associated with that? A: So I'd say our mom just treated us sort of like siblings.She didn't work super hard to treat us as equal. She treated us as individuals and then our dad, he was really—I think maybe the twin thing stuck with him and he was like, well, what do I do? Cause he had twins in his family. And so for some reason I think that he felt he had to work hard. He had to work harder as a father to figure out how to, to do right by us. And so to this day when he writes his birthday cards, he'll write the same message verbatim in each card. And I've expressed to him that what he's attempting to do and what the effect of what he's actually doing, they're complete opposites. Like he's attempting to treat us as equals. But he's also erasing our identity by writing the same message in each card, cause we're not the same person. But he doesn't ever want us to read into anything that he writes or says that might communicate, you are more of this than her or you're better at this than her, or I love you more than her. And that sentiment is very, very sweet. So we've stopped fighting him when it comes to the cards, but even when it comes to buying gifts, he'll just buy us two of the same thing. Like he genuinely mentally can't, can't get past it. Rachel: Do you feel like he knows who each of you are? A: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. He just has a hard time verbalizing it cause he thinks that we'll take offense to it. But I know that he knows. Rachel: What are some of the other ways that he expresses that knowledge? A: Him and I have a warmer relationship than him and my sister. Growing up we all butted heads for different reasons, but he knew that if he upset my sister that she was gonna wage war and that he wasn't gonna survive it. And so, I mean, just a few weeks ago she texted him and I was like, tell him that he's your best friend, it's gonna make his entire day. And he was like beaming from ear to ear. Our mom was like, I don't know what you texted him, but this man is like on a different level. But if I texted him and was like, “Hey, best friend,” like, he already knows that we're best friends. So it wouldn't have the same effect. (Laughs) I think that he knows that I'm in his corner and that I'll defend him if other people in the family, you know, if they end up locking horns with him. But at the same time he knows that if he offends me, then he's lost his only soldier. So, it's an interesting dynamic. Rachel: When you were growing up, did you spend time separately with your parents or was it always you and I_____ together? A: It was always us together. always us together. Either our mom was driving us to all these rehearsals and we were obviously either playing in the same orchestra as kids or we were going to the same dance practices. And same thing for our dad. Even when we would go on hikes or things like that, it was always us and our dad or us and our mom to go to the mall. It was never individual. I think it would've been nice to have that separate time. As I got older, I thought about it. Cause I, I've seen other parents and they will go outta their way to be like, all right, today is just me and my three-year-old, or tomorrow's me and my five-year-old. And I think something about the age difference allows them to do that and compartmentalize. But that never happened with us. Rachel: What were some of the other things that were going on? Were you in different, classes in school? Did you have different friends or the same friends? A: We were definitely in different classes, I think for most of our academic careers. Maybe in kindergarten we were in the same class. And then after that, I think schools and teachers made it a point to have us in separate classes. and it just so happened that all of our friends, all of our closest friends, were the same growing up. Now that we've gotten older, that's changed. But when we were going to the same schools and there were only 50 kids in our graduating class, it's not like there are so many people to choose from. But we ended up sharing the same best friends up until we were probably 18. Even today, our closest, closest best friends who are like family, we share them. But, I do have best friends outside of that today, and she does not. I was the one who would go out and get the friends and then bring them back to and then if we both were like, yeah, we like them and then they could handle having twins as friends—cause I think that was the test for them, not do we like each other, but can you handle having two of us in your life at once? And do you even know how to navigate that kind of relationship? I'm a little more extroverted, although I can be super shy. And so even when we were kids, I mean, we lived in Spain for a little bit and we didn't speak the language. And I'd go to my dad on the playground and be like, “How do I say hi, do you wanna be my friend?” And he'd tell me and I'd memorize it and I'd run back to this one person on the playground. I'd be like, I'd just repeat it verbatim. And they'd say something and I'd run back to my dad and I was like, okay, what do I say now? And I just go back and forth and I_____ would be like on the swings doing her thing, knowing that I'd come back with a friend for us to play with And I think that sort of continued as we got older I think because I'm naturally a little more open, not necessarily warmer, just more open as a person. People are pretty receptive and they feel, you know, they feel kindness and they open up pretty easily. And so then friendships ensue from there and they meet I_____ and they see she's a gem. But whether or not they would've met each other in the wild, I can't say. But certainly the friendships have stuck. And so even through high school, we each pretty much shared, I would say, like one best friend. And then in college we had two best friends. and I never felt like, well, but this is mine. Like I did the work. I never felt that way. And also, if it just so happened, I hit it off with this one person and I_____ never connected with them I could still be their friend. It wasn't like a, either you're down for the program with the both of us, or you're not gonna be my friend. It was never that, it just so happened to work where there was synergy amongst the three of us when we got together. Rachel: Within these friendships, do you feel like you and I_____ had different ways of relating to your friends? A: Definitely. Even the way that we text or she doesn't text, to hang out with people. and the way she expresses her love and the dynamics that she has, even with our closest friends, are completely different than the dynamics that we share. One in particular who's like a brother to us, they fight and that's like how they show their love, by like talking about the most honest stuff. And then if I see her doing that, then to offer a little bit of balance I'm the one who's like, it's okay. You're all right. Wipe your tears. It's okay. and then sometimes she'll be like the clown for the afternoon who's like, making everyone laugh. And then I'm like, well, yep. I take a back seat and laugh at her jokes. And sometimes the rules are reversed where I'm doing standup for an hour and she's, you know, clapping in the audience with my friend. Yeah. So I think there's some balancing aspect and then there are some relationships that are just fundamentally different with our friends. The way we talk to them is different. The way we text is completely different. Rachel: You mentioned earlier that one of the tests is, can they handle being friends with twins? What have you experienced that taught you that that's something not everyone can handle? A: Meeting people who get overwhelmed. And you can look in their eyes and they're just... like we're twins—we can finish each other's sentences. Sometimes we talk over each other if we get excited and not everyone's used to that dynamic. And so having someone who's a third party who is not privy to like the full lives that we lead and the sort of the mind that we, like the consciousness that we share in a way, it can be overwhelming for them to even have a conversation with twins. And the ping pong, the visual ping pong in their eyes of going back and forth between watching us talk. I can tell if someone's getting overstimulated, and if that's the case, then we feel like we have to like, you know, tone down and hold back so that they feel a little more at ease. But that's not a sustainable relationship necessarily. Sometimes they can grow into the role of, yes, I can be a friend to both, and sometimes they're only meant to be a friend to one. Rachel: When you walk into a room together, what is the feeling that you have? A: We make lots of jokes about this cause we know that there's power that comes with entering any room as a twin. People are watching and looking and I think even growing up, lots of kids would be like, oh yeah, such and such said that they know you. And we'd be like, what are you talking about? They'd be like, “Yeah, the twins!” And I, as I got older, I realized that it's easier for people to remember us than it is for us to remember them, because they're looking at us as a package deal. And for them, seeing twins is such a rarity that had stuck out in their minds. The joke is this; we have animal totems. Hers is a fox, mine is a snake. Whenever we walk into a room, we're like, yeah, it's serpent and fox energy. And everyone's gonna feel it. And it changes the dynamic. But it's a lot of power when you have two people who, you know, know each other deeply and there are two sets of eyes looking at you for your one set of eyes. It's a lot of power, and I think that's why I try to be as kind and warm as I possibly can, cause I've seen people be overwhelmed even if we didn't say anything. But we also do love the fact that there is a little bit of inherent power when you walk into a room, cause people are just sort of shocked. No one was expecting to see twins. No one's really ever expecting to see twins, although we're all out here all the time. Even when I see twins, I&nbsp; feel like my day just improved, and I'm a twin. Like, it's, it's so silly, but I understand the psychology. I do get it. Rachel: So by contrast, what does it feel to walk into a room by yourself? A: I still feel powerful, but I know that people aren't looking at me because I'm in this sort of, this like couple or this duo that they're intrigued by psychologically. This is another conversation that I literally had last night where my friends were like, do you ever get like knots in your stomach or butterflies when you walk into your room and you don't know people? And I was like, no. And I_____ was like, yeah, I do. And I was like, do you really? She was like, I get anxious all the time. And I was like, I just hope it's not awkward. And then you just go from there, like chest forward head, like leaning into it. So I think I still feel as powerful, but I know that people aren't looking and examining for the same reasons. and I know that I also get to make my own impressions separate from the person beside me, and that they're not coming to immediate conclusions about who I am based off of who's around me. Rachel: Do you feel like you make a different impression when you're on your own versus when you're with your sister? A: I actually think it's the same. I'm the same person, but I think I might be even more outgoing when I'm socializing because I don't have someone with me who I'm like, I wanna make sure that she's comfortable all the time. And I know that not every social scenario is comfortable for everyone in the same way. I have a pretty high barometer, like it would take a lot for me to feel uncomfortable, for better or for worse. But I think when we're together, I always wanna make sure that she's comfortable in parties or, or larger social events. But when I'm by myself, I'm just floating and dancing through the room and like laughing super loud and doing whatever I want, however I want, and then I go home and don't think about this. So like, I think afterwards, I know I_____ will examine how she socialized. I don't do that. so I just, I live in a different kind of way, but I appreciate how she does have that introspection. I think I just move through with a little more freedom. Rachel: Is there any tension that comes from having very different experiences of the same thing? A: Weirdly, no. As much as I love having someone who I think is interpreting most scenarios similarly to myself, it's also fantastic when we don't, and for whatever reason our private lives and our public lives, there's no cross, there's no bleeding over. So the way I relate to her is my sister, like, she's the absolute love of my life. Like I couldn't do it without her. She's my favorite person in the world. She brings me so much joy on a daily basis. And I shower her with compliments every day. And I would, the things I do with her, I would never do with anybody else. Like I've never done it with anyone I've dated, even with best friends. Like our relationship is so different and that has not been affected for whatever reason by anything that's taken place outside of the walls of our own home, even when we were younger. Cause I was like, the way people are treating us has nothing to do with how you and I see each other and everything to do with how they see us and how they seek to understand or don't understand us and their own sort of personal world that they're projecting. And luckily there hasn't been, or I don't know if it's luckily, but there just hasn't been any crossed wires there. They're separate. And I think that's why I cherish the friendship and the sisterhood that much more because it's still as precious and cute as it was when we were two years old. Nothing has really changed. I mean, many things have changed, but the same sweetness that existed then still exists now. We haven't been hardened by how people have been cruel to us or treated us or compared us, which is a wonderful thing to report, . Rachel: Not to harp on the painful ballet memories. A: Yeah, no, let's go back to it. Yeah. (Laughs) Rachel: Cause that's a moment where I think a lot of friends, siblings, they could have taken the other route. You know, this is your fault, or you're the reason that I'm experiencing this pain. How do you feel like you stayed on each other's team? A: I think the thing is, I never saw her feeding into the dynamic that existed when we were in rehearsals or ballet classes, ever. She didn't say anything about it, but she never fed into it. And I knew that really she was there to play the game, which was to be the best. She just wanted to be the best. That was it. And it had nothing to do with me. Even if I wasn't in the room, she still wanted to be the best. And I wasn't upset at her for it. In fact, I'd look at her and be like, we're made of the same stuff. If she can do it, I know that I can do it too. She's a barometer for what I'm capable of in some ways. And so it was painful to know that she was able to do it with so much ease. And for me, I just, I just couldn't do it in that exact way. But she never fed into it. Around that same time, I also developed scoliosis when I was 11. So I was diagnosed, and then I had to wear a back brace for several years of my life from 12 to 16. I wore this really intense plastic brace that came from like right underneath my armpit all the way down to my hip. And it was this crazy shape and I had to wear it under my clothes for 21 hours a day. And I got really bad rashes from it, especially when it was hot outside, and I had to figure out how to camouflage it because the shape of it was not meant to fit my body. It was meant to correct what I had going on. So it protruded in weird ways. and I avoided hugs from people cause I didn't wanna have to talk about it. I had to buy shirts that were like three sizes too big. And I was sort of battling with that too. So between that and dance, I was like, and then, you know, wanting to be an A student, I was like, listen, I can't go mad. I can't go crazy. I can only fight so many battles at once. She's my friend, she's my sister. I didn't have energy to make an enemy out of anyone else who wasn't inherently one. I think ballet prepared me for that, that the world wasn't gonna treat us similarly. And then our bodies weren't gonna be similar, which I never expected that they would, but I didn't think that they would deviate in that way so quickly. And that I'd be living with this thing for the rest of my life, essentially, and that I'd have to figure out ways to correct it. I mean, there were moments where we talked about getting surgery and then putting like six screws and like metal poles in my back, and that was a nightmare. And I was going to doctor's appointments all the time by myself and like super nervous to get my curve measured and to see if it had progressed or not. And I was doing all those things by myself with my mom. So at no point was that a journey that I ever expected her to join me in on. I think I expected her to be a little more emotionally supportive. At the same time we were kids and she had gotten what she wanted up until that point in life. And so I, I don't think she even knew how to support someone who wasn't getting exactly what they wanted, And so when you're 11, what's a kid gonna say to another, like, even sisters, what could your sister say to you when you're like really going through it and like crying every day looking in the mirror, doing exercises, but like seeing that your body is like fundamentally uneven and imbalanced and I'm gonna have to live with that forever. And I was just trying to reckon through like, I don't wanna hate my body. I don't. I don't wanna look in the mirror and cringe at what I see. At the same time I'm a teenager. I'm getting messaging from all sorts of media, from school that certain bodies are attractive and other bodies simply are not. And despite being naturally thin or naturally athletically built, I just will never have an even body. And I, I just, there was a moment where we—I went to get physical therapy over spring break. Like I literally spent my spring break in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, amid snow, spending, you know, 12 hours a day doing workout stuff with other kids who had scoliosis. And I_____ was getting her nails done and going to the movies. And I was like, well if this is not a metaphor for how our lives have branched in different directions, I don't know what is. And she was like, what's wrong? Why are you so upset? I was like, I'm literally over here sweating and paying for having this physical condition that I didn't ask for. And you went to see a film today on our spring break. You went to get your nails done today. And then we had a therapy session and the lady was like, well, do you want your sister to come in? And I was like, why? She's not a part of this world. What would, how would I benefit from her sitting there listening to the sob story of our collective lives? Not that I was gatekeeping and being like, well we have scoliosis and you don't. It just was like, why, what would she benefit from listening to this? I think I wanted more support then. And we talked about it now. I was like, I really could have used a little more softness from you growing up. And I think we said that everything was so normal and my mom was just like, this is just what it is. We have to work through it. And I appreciate that. But I could have used a slight bit more tenderness, especially with the back brace and whatnot. Cause I was like, we made lots of jokes, but were they as funny as we’d hoped they were? And I think that was an attempt to normalize it, but it was pretty painful. But again, I didn't talk that much about it out loud. Despite talking a lot socially, when it comes to my emotions and other things that I'm processing, I don't really talk about it out loud. I just handle it myself for better or for worse. I thought she would see, I mean, cause she was seeing all of it, like the back spasms I was getting in the middle of the night, like I would have to spend 30 minutes a day doing exercises. We had to buy gear for, like—I had a whole room just for like these crazy things you could never imagine your body would do just to help combat or not allow my curve to progress. And I was like, well, if you're seeing it every day, like you're seeing it every day, surely that's enough evidence for you. I don't think I'd have to say it out loud. But again, She was living a different life. And so she was seeing it, but she wasn't taking note of it and thinking that it was painful to me, because I was just doing it and I also wasn't talking about it. We grew up with two other twins who were girls and we all looked kind of similar and they had like these Victoria's Secret curves. And we went on vacation together and I was like, yeah, mentally I can't do this. Like buying bathing suits was really challenging for me. And then I'd be around these three people who not only had like, just even bodies, like symmetrical bodies, but we're developing differently. And I just was like, wow. I guess I'm just an adolescent boy who's flat chested and has a six pack and like, one leg longer than the other. Like, I had to wear a lift in one of my shoes. It was the least glamorous experience of my life. And I just remember feeling so, so terrible every time we would have to get into a pool together. And despite that, I still had fun, but having three bodies who were similar to mine but also radically different, made it so much worse. And then at some point I was like, I refuse to be the girl, the woman, whatever, who looks at photos of herself and you know, tears it apart. I just said, I can't do it and I won't do it. And so I'm still in the process of reconditioning my brain to say “The way you look is fantastic.” Like if I'm on the beach and someone takes a photo, I'm going to accept it for what it is. We'll just start with the acceptance, then we can move up to “you look beautiful” if we need to, But let's just start with the basics. Like, you've got a body and that's fantastic. Pretty stellar. We're starting at a really high place. It's functioning, it's actually healthy. We love that as well. And now we're just, we're building. I'm delighting in buying bikinis these days. Like I just bought two more last week. I just used to wear one-pieces. I used to hate it. I used to hate it so much. And I'm just coming around to it, I'm getting there. But I do look at her body and every once in a while I'm like—just, it's so, even. I'm not even focused on shape. It's just even. Like when you bend over, both sides of your lower back are even—what's that like? Your waist is the same on both sides. What's that like? Like I'm living this one side is curved and the other is straight. It's an interesting reality for me to reckon with. Rachel: I wanna talk a little bit about college time. I know that you ended up going to school together. A: Yeah, we ended up applying to all the same schools cause we have the same interests, career-wise and otherwise. And we both wanted to be in the city, so we applied to the same schools, got accepted at the same schools with the same sort of scholarships and whatnot, which was fantastic. And then when we got to college, completely different classes, and completely different friends for the first time as well. Rachel: What was it like for you to be friends with people who didn't know your sister? A: It felt normal. I mean, it's so strange cause we'd lived our entire lives not having that. And especially in grad school, we went to completely different grad schools. No one knew who I was. No one knew who she was. and then it was this fun little party trick when she showed up one day and they were like, oh my god. And then they knew I had a twin sister who did poetry and they thought she was amazing. And I was like, yeah, she is, but she's my best kept secret. But yeah, no one had any reference points. But I'd been making friends for both of us our entire lives, so I was never questioning whether people liked me for me or the person next to me. So when I was in a situation where I was making friends by myself, I was like, well this is what I've been doing my entire life. Rachel: Were you studying the same thing? A: In grad school, I changed, I went, I studied fiction, I mean, still creative writing, but our focuses and concentrations were different. She studied poetry and I studied fiction. And those worlds, again, despite being creative, are entirely different. And I missed the people, I missed the poets that I used to be around in undergrad a lot, cause I still felt like one, I still moved like one, I was just writing in a different format. So I kind of lamented the loss of the cohort and the overall energy of being around poets versus fiction writers. It was very stale. It was very one-dimensional. Actually people thought I was like this rebellious, and just going against the grain, and what is she doing? They're like, are you sure you're writing fiction? Are you sure you're meant to be in this program? And I was like, yeah, actually, the fact that you're questioning me lets me know that I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. I was really operating completely differently. Like she was writing poetry and people were like, yes, this is poetry. And I was writing fiction and people were like, are you okay? Like, like, can you write normally? So it was kind of fun for me cause I got to play. And no one had to be like, is your sister okay? You know, they'd have to come to me with their concerns. They didn't have to go to her. So I was like, I'm gonna do exactly what I want, how I want to, Rachel: So you ended up switching to fiction, but when you first started in college, you were both writing poetry, right? Did you have any fears around being in that shared space? A: The good news is our voices were super different on the page. If they were similar, I would be very concerned. and then I think really by sophomore year, I sort of knew that. I wanted more than what that genre had to offer. So I started to take more classes in fiction after two years. Even though I got my degree in poetry and so I knew prior to applying to grad school, prior to even graduating from undergrad, that I was going to transition. And that I think was a relief. My mom sort of jokingly said one day she's like, “Well, I can't have you guys competing against each other professionally as poets, so someone's gotta make a change.” I was like, well, I hear you loud and clear. And luckily, I took a fiction class and I thought, this is super challenging. I have no idea what I'm doing. This must be the answer. So I ended up doing that and it was a very rough transition. And I just was like, this is a thing I'm supposed to do cause I want to, but also it's a relief to know that we aren't going to be in the same genre. Cause now that she's getting her book published in September, I don't have to think, well mine's gonna come out maybe next year and that might be terrible for us. And like, how are critics gonna receive it and how are they gonna, they're gonna wanna compare it—cause there are twins who write poetry who have existed for like decades and people—the Dickman brothers—and people always talk about them, and they sort of read their books in tandem and that's fine. But we've done so much of that together. I'm like, certain things just have to be for us as individuals. Like she got a nose piercing. I love nose piercings. I will never get it done. She rocks a buzz cut. I mean, not currently, but like she's gonna return to it. I'll never cut my hair above my shoulder. There are just certain things I will not do on principle because that's just her territory and we each deserve to have our own thing. I think it gives us some space from the outside world looking in, drawing all these comparisons, making all these annoying, irritating remarks all the time. Especially as we get older. I think they think it's stranger that we're more similar than not as we creep up into our thirties. Rachel: I know that you've done collaborative work with your sister, and you end up taking on different roles. Can you talk to me about that process a little bit? A: So rocky. So rocky. I understand that people are like, you know, don't work with people you marry. I feel like she's my spouse basically and I'm just like, yeah, you're right. We hadn't determined our roles before we got into collaborating. So we thought, yes, we're both gonna send off emails and handle logistics and then we're both gonna enter the studio space and do 50-50. We're gonna both warm up the dancers and we're gonna both create the choreo. And that just didn't end up happening. I think we just sort of fell into the roles that maybe suited us and our natures better. But then we ended up resenting the other person for not doing more of the thing that we were doing. So when she was like finding studio space and emailing the dancers with links and references for what we were trying to go for, she resented me for not doing that too, cause she felt like she was the businesswoman. And then I had the luxury of creating. But of course when we got into the studio, the pressure to create was immense, cause we'd never done it before. And I would create material and she'd be like, well let's try it like this. And then I'd be like, well if you're not actually offering new material, can you really refine it or revise it? And so I think we clashed a lot in the beginning and just now are we probably realizing what our roles are. I could be doing more of the emailing and whatnot and leading conversation beginning at the top of rehearsals, and she could be doing more of the creating actual physical material in the studio. But we both understand what we're best at, too. So I can't resent her for not doing more of the thing that doesn't come super naturally to her under those pressured circumstances of like, we have an hour, we paid for an hour, we have to create something cause we see our dancers in 30 minutes. Rachel: When you have the outcome of your work together—what is the feeling compared to when you finish a story on your own? A: When it comes to dance we don't just choreograph it, but we perform in it. And I always feel like, because I wear more of the choreographer's hat when I get to perform, I can't 100% live in the performance, cause I'm still thinking as a choreographer. Whereas she, again, can attack just the performance because she sort of was embodying the dancer all along. So she's not sitting in two particular roles. She's sort of more comfortably situated in one. And I feel like I'm thinking, are we all spaced out properly? On top of, am I emoting? Am I executing? When it comes to writing a story, I just feel the relief of, I've done it. And I, again, I didn't have to collaborate with anyone. So again, I didn't meet any resistance outside of my own ego and my revision brain. But I got to do exactly what I wanted and I got to live through it as the writer and the editor, which are two roles that I have to do. But there's no one to—she's not sitting there doing the writing while I'm editing. I did all of it myself. I played all the roles. Rachel: What does confrontation look like between you two? A: Oh, it can get brutal. I mean, in the past few years it's really toned down incredibly. But because we're big on the truth, we'll just say it. We'll just say the thing that we're thinking on top of our brain, You know, just so lacking in compassion. But we're like, but it's the truth. And you had to hear it. And I think when we first started choreographing, there was a lot of tension and we just wouldn't—at a certain point, we wouldn't even say things to each other cause we knew that that would be the trigger that would, the tornado would begin again and you just don't even have time for that. We're literally in the studio, we paid for this. We do not have time to get into another fight. And I think we just started to realize in the past few years that A, we don't enjoy fighting, I prefer communicating, but our communication styles are also different when we argue. So we're just, we're talking now more than you know, yelling or making little snide remarks to remind you you're not doing the thing you said you would do today, you're not also doing it well at all. We're not doing that as much anymore, which is a relief because we used to really go for it. Rachel: Do you talk about how you should treat each other, and how you do treat each other? A: Only in fights. When we feel like someone's not treating another person correctly or you're not lifting your weight. When we have those sorts of conversations, then that's an opportunity for us to say like, wait, pause for a second. And actually we hadn't talked about the ballet wound our entire lives until we signed up for this. I woke up one morning crying, like I crying out of nowhere. And I was like, I don't know if I've ever voiced this to you, but I, like, I I, I suffered, it was really painful for me growing up in the ballet world. I don't think she, I thought she saw it, but she didn't see the depths of it. I started thinking about the differences in how we were treated growing up and things like that, and the pain that comes with that. And so I actually verbalized for the first time in 29 years what that experience was like. And she felt terrible, but she actually got to hear it for the first time. And that helped a lot in healing. And I didn't, I never foresaw that happening, like ever. Rachel: What is the time that you've spent away from each other? A: No time. No time. And I do think about that. No time. I mean, when we went to grad school, that was the only time that we were really leading separate lives. And even in our work now, we lead separate lives, but because of Covid we're in the same house still working. And I do think what it would be like for one of us to live in a completely different city, to even live alone. I've never had a bedroom to myself my entire life. Like ever, ever. And I, I never, you know, if I wanna go on a walk, she's right there with me. I've never gone on a walk by myself. Not, I mean, I've done stuff by myself, but never sort of consistently, like I didn't, I've never gone out to eat dinner by myself. I've never gone to a movie by myself. I've never done things like that because she's always there. And if I wanna go to a party, but I'm like, I don't know too many people, it might be kind of awkward. I'll just bring her and I can still go wherever I want. But with someone who brings me comfort. I think about that often. Cause I think the older that we get, I think she thinks our life plans are pretty similar. And in many ways they are, but in many ways they aren't. Even in terms of location, I would love to live in New Mexico. I would love to live in the desert. And I know that she would love to live in upstate New York. And we just haven't spent time apart that way. She's never even gone on a trip without me. Every trip we've ever taken it, it's been together. And so I'm curious, part of me thinks that it really won't be as radically different as we suspect, but I don't know if we're good at having phone calls. I think we're so used to talking in person that our phone calls are terrible. We're terrible over the phone. We dunno how to talk. The good news about her is that we're both really independent despite leading so much of our lives together. So even if we're, even if we're sort of working in the same space, we will not talk to each other for hours and we are cognizant that we just need space as individuals. And so I love when she goes to hang out with her friends. I love when she gets to experience life without me, that brings me so much joy. And then I get time by myself in the apartment. So I think we try to find ways for that to happen. We'll close doors. We just don't infringe upon each other's space, especially when we're working. Or if somebody just wants to rest and the other person doesn't. Rachel: I'm curious about your bedroom. A: Yeah. (Laughs) Many people are, yeah. Rachel: Can you describe what that is like? A: Yeah. It's the same thing we've had since we were born. Two twin beds in a single bedroom. Yes. Lots of people have conversations with us about, like, if you're dating someone, how does that work? You don't invite people over. And it's like, no, we don't invite people over unless they're friends. And again, I've, I've never had a room by myself. I've never had—I just don't know what that would feel like. I'm so curious. I would love to experience it, but I don't know what that's like. And I anticipate that if we ever get married, I don't know, who knows, but if that ever happens, that'll also be a really interesting bridge to cross. Cause thus far there hasn't been any other, not even competing for us, but other person who's been so important that we really felt like we had to split our time up and that there was a new person to introduce who wasn't a best friend, but was something more. That hasn't really happened yet. So I don't know how I'll navigate that either. Rachel: Is there anything else that came up for you when you were thinking about this conversation? A: I've noticed recently when friends hang out with both of us, especially if we take trips with these friends, is that they've never seen our sisterhood outside of a two hour hangout. So if they see it for 72 hours, then they see the ins and outs of how it operates. And the things that we do that we thought were normal are things that they apparently have never seen before. and it ends up being the really cute stuff that we do. We took a hike and I_____ for whatever reason, decided to wear Doc Martens that she had never broken in before for the first time on a three hour uphill hike. And I told her beforehand, I was like, that's the most insane stupid thing I've ever heard in my life. You're gonna suffer. And we got to the top of the mountain and her heels were literally bleeding. And so without conversation, it was already understood that she had suffered enough. And so it was now time for me to—we switched shoes. We didn't talk about it. We just took our shoes off and just switched shoes. And our friend was like, that's so crazy. That's like a superhuman superpower. And I was like, in what way? Someone is suffering. You're just, and you wear the same shoe size. And she was really moved by that. We do this all the time in really, in smaller ways. Even sometimes she'll untie my shoes if I don't wanna bend down to untie them. I think I took for granted that level of either intimacy or sweetness or just willingness to, to do whatever to make sure that other person is also comfortable. But I mean, there are lots of things that we won't do for each other, like get water for her if she's in the bedroom. But apparently I'll, you know, I'll switch shoes if she's bleeding. So there are limits. Rachel: It seems like your day-to-day lives right now are very different. A: Yeah. Super. Rachel: Can you describe how that shows up in your relationship with each other right now? A: Well, she works a nine to five and really she works more than a nine to five cause she works on the weekends, too. And I work several part-time jobs that allow me the freedom to write and to create and to read. She's making more money than I am, so she's more financially secure than I am. So there's a trade off, obviously in this particular capitalistic structure. But, she, I think she wants part of the freedom that I have in my schedule. And so I was convinced for a while that she resented me for sleeping in until eight o'clock in the morning if I didn't have to be at work at nine. And I didn't have to perform the same way she did in the somewhat corporate world. I could wear jeans to work if I wanted to. I felt like there was tension even in smaller conversations of "You didn't take the trash out." But really what she was saying was, you have all this extra time. Why are you not doing more work in this particular domestic sphere when you can afford to? Cause I'm already sort of burning the candle at both ends when it comes to the professional life. I didn't wanna be the reminder of the thing that she wanted, that she didn't have. I try to counteract that by doing more chores or ordering groceries all the time and making sure things are taken care of so that when she is not working, she doesn't have to worry about the smaller things. Cause I have the extra time, but I also do feel a little guilty sometimes cause I see that she's working around the clock and I simply am not, and I'm also delighting in not doing that thing, cause I do not derive joy from burnout. And I've done that before. I don't wanna live like that. But it's a luxury to, to look at someone who's working that hard and for me to say, it's a shame you're working that hard. Rachel: Is finances ever a thing between you two? A: Oh my God, yeah. Yes, yes. She's sort of always made more money than I have. When we were in grad school too, she got a full ride and they literally paid for this apartment. They were paying her rent, not just giving her a free ride, but they were paying for her, rent and our groceries. And I went back to [...] and they gave their students no money. So she was financing our relationship for a few years, and that dynamic had entered where she was like, but I'm the breadwinner and this is my money. And we'd have conversations where it's like, no, it's our money. And what was interesting is that she was making all this money, but only took two classes a semester and I had six classes a semester and I was making nothing. And we had lots of conversations about, when do we step up when someone's drowning in work? It's your turn to step up. And I think even the responsibility too—it being the elder sibling's, like if we go out to eat with our parents, she'll pay for us. But she also has more money in her bank. I'm, you know, I'm the poor one. I'm happy—I'm poor, but I'm happy. You know what I mean? And so it's a little bit of a joke. I do seek to balance that out cause I don't want her to feel financial responsibility all the time. Rachel: What kind of changes over time have you felt in your identity as a twin? A: The attention and the comparison that random strangers would make with us on the street has lessened a lot. And I think people have said that. I mean, we're fraternal to begin with, but we look very, very similar, I'm aware. And I think people—I mean there are two camps. Either we look less similar now or more similar than ever. I don't know which one is true. But I think that, I think that we are just even solidifying in our own personalities and how we like to dress and present to the world and how we navigate the world. So I feel like we're being treated less like twins in a certain kind of way. And yet the closeness and intimacy of the twinship that we share in our personal private sphere remains. I think we're, just in the past few years, understanding that we're radically different. And so I look at this relationship as I would any relationship where I'm like, yes, we're separate individual people. Like if I was dating someone, I wouldn't expect them to clean the same way that I do or to eat the same way that I do. And yet I expect her to do those things, or at least I did up until a few years ago. And we just are now sort of being like, oh my goodness. Yes, you're a full human being. And despite having had this similar experience growing up, the same house, similar values, we move through this world radically differently, in great ways and in small ways. And so we're just now realizing that we just want harmony, and we also have to honor that we're different. Not shame the other person for being different, but honoring that yes—when we first meet people, she's more reserved. Okay. And? I can't ask her to be more extroverted. That's not her personality. And that also not the answer to whatever harmony we're trying to achieve. One thing that we didn't talk about is the fact that I_____ acts, I don't act. And that's a world that I had never entered with her. The greatest joy of my life was being able to witness her on stage and not be on stage with her. And that had never happened ever before. We were always on stage together. And even though I have interest in that world, I was like, I'm never, I'm, I'm not gonna touch it. On principle again, you deserve to have certain things for yourself. And so our senior year, she was part of a production that I wasn't. That never happened before. She had a whole crew and cast and they had all these experiences and spent, I don't know, three hours each day of the week together for six months. And that was a world I had never been a part of. I didn't know anyone. I didn't even understand how it fully worked. And she was so happy. She was so happy. To sit in an audience and have no clue as to what she was gonna say or anything at all—I mean, they were taking their clothes off and doing crazy things. And these 20 year olds were just going for it. And I was thrilled. And I was like, I love not knowing. I actually do not seek to know everything about you, but I really, really enjoy learning things about you and getting to watch you and getting to actually study how she moves on stage and how she talks and getting to experience her as someone who is fully outside of myself, as a stranger almost. And so even now when it comes to things like that, it's honoring the individuality of, even if I do have somewhat interest in this, I think you deserve to have it more, cause you want it a little more, you're more interested. And again, we need not do everything together. Rachel: So it's almost like the most distance you've ever been able to put between you, and you got to see her more clearly? A: Absolutely. I loved it. Spotlight hitting her little face and I loved it. Every bit of it. Rachel: I have a final question, which I ask everyone. When do you feel most like yourself? A: It's honestly by myself, but also in nature. That's it. Any bit of nature. But when I am by myself—not being perceived, no reflective surfaces, just existing, that's when I'm coming home. I’m coming home. I&nbsp; mean, ideally as minimal clothing on as possible. That's when I feel like I'm inhabiting myself and I'm also seeing myself in not other humans, but other creatures around me. I.G., A.G.’s twin, was also interviewed. Listen here. <img width="374" height="800" width_o="374" height_o="800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0d03849ebc9ecc04584b86f1657419218cda4da1c8d9896af210e0f4b23f315b/341003151_1001586921204330_6571066890069105822_n.jpg" data-mid="188895030" border="0" data-scale="53" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/374/i/0d03849ebc9ecc04584b86f1657419218cda4da1c8d9896af210e0f4b23f315b/341003151_1001586921204330_6571066890069105822_n.jpg" /> Previous&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Next https://likeness.ing/I-G Sun, 24 Dec 2023 23:02:28 +0000 Likeness https://likeness.ing/I-G I.G.Themes: sisters, ballet, childhood, creative writing, friendship, collaboration, comparison&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Interview with I.G. - Part 1 by Rachel Smith Interview with I.G. by Rachel Smith This interview has been condensed and edited. All references to specific names and universities have been removed and/or replaced with a 1-second sound gap. Rachel: Can you just introduce yourself for the recording, however you feel comfortable. I: Yes. I am a twin and an artist. I was born in Washington, DC at the Georgetown Hospital, November 1993. And I was born 57 minutes before my sister, so we were not that close in terms of timing. She was breeched, so the doctor opted to turn her around in my mother's stomach as opposed to doing a C-section. But also my water broke before hers, so I've always been, in life, just ready to do things at a faster pace than she is. So she wanted to stay in the womb longer, but because my water already broke, it was time to move things along. And then it was the same thing in the birthing process. I was ready to come out and she needed a little bit more time and a little bit of, like, a push to get her out, and then she came out. Rachel: Okay. So this has been a story that's followed you both in your lives. I: Yes. Yeah. I feel, yeah. Rachel: Okay. Interesting. Can you just tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up in your family? I: Yeah. Our parents were really good at making sure that we were treated as individuals. It was never “the twins” or, I mean other people would put that name on us, but our parents always treated us as individuals. And then they also made sure we understood what it meant to be sisters and what that bond was as twins, which is interesting cause neither one of them are twins. But the way that they've handled it, in my opinion, has been perfect because they let us know that you are two different people and we see you as that. But then they would also make sure that they were even down the middle of everything that they did for us. Our dad would like literally cut napkins in half for breakfast and be like, “Look, they're the exact same,” or count the strawberries and be like, “You both got four strawberries and they're the same size.” So there was never any difference or feeling like, why did she get this and I didn't. They also were really, especially our mom, was really clear about you never let anything come between the bond that you have, no other person or nothing, and you always love each other and look out for each other. And that's something that we both took really seriously. So even today, like the utmost importance to me is that she's taken care of in our relationship and then also outside of it. And I can be very protective of her. Rachel: Do you have other siblings? I: No, just the two of us. Rachel: Did you have separate time with your parents or was it more everything shared and equal? I: It was everything shared, yeah. Even, we always shared a bedroom too, so I've never slept separately from her. Like we have different beds, but it's always been the same room. same bathroom all the time. So everything was shared and then time with our parents was also shared. Unless—I accidentally pushed her off the toilet when we were kids and we were standing on top of it and she cut her chin and she had to go to the emergency room without me. And I was like, wait, why do I have to stay home? Why can't I go with her? That was a moment where she was with my mom by herself and I was with my dad by myself that I remember, but it was always just like, the four of us would always be together or they would be taking us to a dance rehearsal or something, but she was always with me. At school they always separated us, so we were in different classes. And that happened from like first grade onward. We were never in the same classes after that. So the school system made sure that we were separated, but also like—even in the household, even though we were always together, I just always knew who I was separate from her. I didn't know how my parents did it, but I always, always felt distinctly like I____. They knew my character traits and they let me be who I was and they let her be who she was. And you know, obviously we're two different people, so two different personalities, but because they let us be exactly who we were, even though I was always with her, I never felt like this is a unit. I still felt like I was separate even in our relationship to each other. Early on she was always stuck to my mom's hip. Every photo we have, it's just the two of them together. And I'm like, where am I? And they're like, you just ran off somewhere. So I was always going and exploring and just moving. And my parents let me do that. And A____ was always really up under my mom. And that gave her a sense of security. And that's just how we move in life today too. Like I, I'm ready to go, like immediately. And her pacing is just, take a little bit more time, figure it out. And that's just kind of how it's always been. I think we walked around the same time, but when we were still crawling, I did this thing called the sidewinder where I had a specific way of going up and down the stairs that enabled me to move wherever I wanted to go. And my sister would not do that. It was just me. And so at a very young age, I was like, okay, cool. They're gonna let me do my thing and not be like, no, wait, stop. So it gave me the freedom to explore. Our parents were really good at letting us do what we wanted to do and they never put anything on us. They just watched us to see how we would behave. So when we were kids, she went through her phase where she would just take all my toys and my mom would not do anything cuz she just wanted to see how is I____ gonna respond? And I would just let her take my toys and I wouldn't say anything. And that was it. Or like if we fell, they would not be like "huh!", they would wait and see if we were gonna cry first, just to see how we innately reacted. And then they would never like say, this is what I____does versus A____. Rachel: it sounds like at home you had this very intuitive dynamic. But at school you said you were separate. I: Yes. Rachel: What was that like? I: the reason why they did it was cuz they wanted us to have separate personalities and develop differently. Which I was like, that's interesting cuz they're telling us more about how we ought to grow up that's different than how our parents told us. So they were already placing something on us, which is the assumption that we were already assuming that we were one, and this idea that like you have to be separated or else you're not gonna grow into individuals. So I thought that was interesting. But socially, I'll be completely honest and say that I rely on my sister socially all the time and I'm a lot more reserved. So being in separate classes, the stereotypes that other kids put on me was that I was really shy or really serious and they never, always got to see my personality because I, I think it was both the security of knowing that I had someone that was already my best friend. So I didn't feel the need to find friends outside of that. But I was also just more cautious socially than my sister is. She's very outgoing, and so people are drawn to her. And then I'm more quiet and so people misinterpret my being quiet as like, I'm sour, or I'm the evil twin, or I'm not as nice. And so people would gravitate more towards her. And I would have certain friends that I really like, but I'm always very particular about my friends. I'll have like one or two really good friends as opposed to being like, I'm gonna talk to everyone in my class. I was never that person and I never have been. We kind of balance each other out. So like if we're both hanging out with a friend together and she's having a really funny, loud day, I'll lower my energy so that we're not both matching it and then, even together, like if I'm having a louder day or I'm feeling a little more raucous or whatever, then she'll come down here so that we're not both at the same level. We're always doing that. We literally did that last weekend. She was having like a comedy hour moment for like 72 hours and I was like, great, so I'm gonna go down here cause you're up here. And then it always switches depending on the day. So I can be very loud and talkative. It just depends on the person and I think I'm more choosy about who I wanna give myself to. I guess that's the difference is I choose, like, do I like this person enough to show them who I am? Or am I okay with going a little bit back and receding and saying I know who I am and I have a twin who knows who I am and that's fine. So I don't have to like prove anything to anyone. Rachel: Is this something you consciously think about when you're balancing each other out? Or does it just happen and then you reflect on it later and you realize... I: It just happens. Yeah, because I think that we've been in situations where we see people be overwhelmed by talking to both of us at the same time. You can see it in their face where they're like, bewildered, and so it always makes us feel bad cause you're like, oh, maybe we both came on too strong at once. That's the only time I'm cognizant of it. If I see someone's face kind of change or their energy pulls back and then you're like, oh, I'm gonna go really quiet and let her do the talking so that they feel like they're only talking to one person as opposed to two. Cause sometimes you can see 'em go back and forth like ping pong with their eyes and you're like terrified for them and the experience that they're having. So out of kindness one of us will just be like, I'm just gonna pull back right now so that they don't get really just flustered. Rachel: Is that okay for you? Do you ever think: what is it about us, two people that is so overwhelming to you? I: Look, I'll say like, if anyone's gonna be my best friend, they also have to be close with my sister. That's just how I feel about it. So we share many of the same friends in common and we do hang out. It will be the three of us. And those friends are very good at allowing us to talk over each other or talk at the same time, or not. They're very good at doing that in a way where we don't feel like it's too much for them and we can just express ourselves freely. With new people, they're thinking it's the same person twice, and then that's already like making them dizzy. And then on top of that we can both be really just like, bright at the same time. I never wanna be the person that's too much. I feel like A_____ is okay with being too much. For me, it makes me cringe inside. I'm always reading other people and, maybe it's because I am a twin, but I'm always cognizant of how they're seeing me or how they're seeing us, and then I move according to how they feel. I don't really consider, well, maybe I wanted to keep on talking or whatever. I just consider, like, to keep the peace in the situation or to make it like a positive situation for everyone, I will just bend and move, cause I'm used to doing that in this relationship. Rachel: When you are in a space that's your own space and you're not being seen as a twin or perceived as a twin, is there more freedom for you? What's the difference? I: Honestly, I don't feel more freedom. It feels the same for me either way. I'm just cognizant of the fact that somebody will get to know me faster if I'm with my sister than if I'm not with her. It'll take me a lot more time to open up because I do use her, like, she makes me feel safe. So if we're going into a new situation where we don't know anybody, and at least I have her, I'll feel more like I can be myself. But for instance, going to graduate school, we went to separate schools, and so there was no twin at that point. And I really did not have like any friends in graduate school. And it was a mix of the people just, they weren't my people. I didn't feel that sort of kinship with them. But I was also very cognizant of the fact that I am not opening up right now and it's because I don't feel like it but also I don't have my buddy here to like make me feel more open. So they're not gonna get the most open version of me unless there's someone that I really resonate with who is open. if someone's more open, like my sister, I find I'll open up to them faster. But if someone is more closed off or shy like me, I probably will not talk to them. Rachel: What was the social dynamic like between you and your sister? If she's more outgoing, better at making friends. How did your social lives evolve? I: Uh, her friends became my friends (Laughs). That was pretty much it. So I'm always just like, yeah, if she's vetted this person, she likes them enough, I will just adopt you as my friend too. But I, I'm, I'm just choosier. So I'll be like, okay, A_____ likes you, so you passed one layer of the test. But then I get to decide when I meet you, do I like you? And then if I do, then I'll really just take her friends. Like, that's how it's pretty much always worked. She's like, introduce me to your friends, and I'm like, eh, I don't really have any (Laughs). I have associates. Rachel: Associates. Was she always okay with that? With you, quote, taking her friends? I: Yeah, she was fine with it. I think that when it did come to graduate school, that's when she was like, you're benefiting from my friends that I found, but I'm not getting to know like anyone at ______. Because I was just like, they're having parties but I'm just not gonna show up. And so she would get upset cause she was like, I feel like I'm not getting into your world. And I was like, yeah, I just don't feel like there is a world. We'll like, go on a vacation and we'll go with her friends. And I'll always be like, yeah, they're your friends. And if I know them well enough, they can be our friend. But mostly I'm just like, that's your friend group. And then my friends, I don't really feel that strongly about them the way that she feels about her friends. The way we also build friendships is very different. She's all in and gives that person everything. That's just not how I approach friendships. I think that that's how I approach a relat— like a romantic relationship, but not a friendship because, I don't need a friendship is how I feel. Like if you're not gonna be the most amazing person in the world and I already have my twin, then I'm not really looking for anything. So if someone hits me and I'm like, wow, this is a really special person, then I'll put in the effort. But I'm kind of just like resting on my laurels just like, yeah, if it happens, it does. And if not, I'm happy either way. And I kinda like being left alone cause I just like silence. So I feel like it's okay. But sometimes you do have moments where she is like, wait, why? And then I'm like, yeah, but that's just not how I'm built. Like I just think I'm a little bit different. Rachel: When you become friends with someone who you met through your sister, does it feel like they are coming to you and understanding you as an individual? Or is there something that they bring to their relationship with you based on the fact that they knew your sister first? I: Yeah, I think her good friends, they treat me as an individual so they take the time to learn me. And then the people that are not her good friends, they do treat me as like an iteration of A_____. So they think the jokes that they've had with her or whatever, the rapport will transfer to me, which is the most uncomfortable thing cause it's like, I wanna be able to laugh with you, but I wasn't there for that and I'm genuinely not that person. And so I think when they do take the time to understand that I will be quieter upfront and I'm, it's not that I'm trying to be rude, I'm just trying to figure out where we're at. People that like expect me to be more like A_____, I'll just kind of not talk to them at all, which is always my plan A, which is like, if I'm not into it, I just will not engage and then she'll have to do more of the heavy lifting socially, It puts a lot of onus on her to keep up the conversation and make sure there's a good flow. Whereas I'm just kinda like, if the flow wasn't there to begin with, I will just remove myself so that I'm physically present, but emotionally, energetically I'm elsewhere. My thing is like, you guys have a good time and don't worry about me. I wanna give them space to be who they are together and recognize that the way that two people relate is not the way that three people relate. If I really like them, I'll engage more. But I think sometimes her friends will read that differently when I give them space. They see it as me being like, I don't wanna be a part of this. I'm not interested. Where I'm just trying to be gracious and say like, I'm acknowledging the fact that you guys were friends first. Rachel: So what was it like, when you were in these different spaces in school? And then, you're both having different experiences it sounds like, but then you come home.what was that interaction or dynamic like between you two? I: The biggest thing I remember is that's when we got cell phones and everybody was texting and her phone would be just blowing up, people would be texting her all this stuff. And I have no texts in my phone (Laughs). And I'd be like, wait, who's texting you? What are they saying? And she's like, if you spoke to people more then maybe they'd text you. And I just felt so bad cause I was like, I feel that I'm being asked to be someone that I'm not, I felt there was also the comparison with people of like, well, if A_____ is so happy-go-lucky and warm and affable and charming, then why can't you be the same way? And it's like, if I—if they had never known that A_____ existed, it was just me, then would it be more okay for me to be quiet? Because it's in comparison to someone who's making you laugh all the time. I think that there's always a narrative in my mind of if people both know us, they would prefer her over me. And that's always what runs in the back of my mind. Even when we have mutual friends, sometimes if we all hang out together, I'll be like, Hey, you were talking a lot tonight. I just feel like I couldn't get a word in edgewise. Because sometimes they get on a roll and I just feel like I'm, uh, witnessing it, but I'm not participating in it. But I also don't want her to stop being who she is. So I feel that sometimes that is a narrative I create for myself, but I try to break. But I do always ask, do you think I spoke enough? Do you think that I made enough jokes? Do they think I'm funny? Because enough people told me in middle school and high school that I had a sour face or that they thought I was a very serious person, and that's not at all who I was. So to be misread on a pretty consistent basis by people let me know that I wasn't, like—I was aware that I wasn't leading with my best foot, but I also just wasn't interested. I don't wanna perform for you. Like I don't ever walk into a room, thinking I'm the most charming person in the room. I pretty much am like, I'm gonna be a person who doesn't talk at all. And that's gonna be how you remember me. And then my very close friends will know that I am the complete opposite of that. But I have to be okay with the narrative of like, she's very quiet, she's very shy, and then whatever else they think on top of that. But it's never positive attribution. Rachel: You hinted at this a little bit, but do you think that the narrative of very quiet, very shy, is because you have a twin sister who is not those things? I: I just know that people always compare us—obviously as twins growing up—always compare us, of like, well if you're this then the other person has to be the complete opposite of that. And because I let her lead socially. I'm like, take it. I don't want it, take the reins. I think that people make assumptions about if she's all these wonderful things, then you have to be the opposite of that. I was always the evil twin. I'm like, I don't even know how I can be evil, but okay, that's fine. But it was always like, who's—that's the first question—who's the good twin and who's the evil twin? And then like they would talk to A_____ enough and be like, well I_____ must be the evil twin. Rachel: Is this something people actually would say to you? "The evil twin"? I: Oh, all the time. when they would even first meet us growing up, they'd be like, so who's the evil twin? First five minutes. And we'd be like, no one. And they'd laugh and they'd be like, we're gonna find out eventually. Like, what? And it turns you off because you're like, what? Like that's not—that dichotomy, that's not real. We're nuanced people. There is no good and bad. But we've had people that have honestly been like, some sort of FBI investigation where they're like, we're gonna find out which one of you is whatever. And you're like, what? Why can't we both be nice people? Why does it have to be one is warm, one is cold, one is this, one is the other? And other people made that—that's just how they saw us. So if A_____ leads on one foot, because I'm falling back all the time, I'm not choosing to present myself. Then by default I am the opposite thing. I'm always the thing that's not what you would want. And my sister's always very good at giving me verbal affirmation. So she'd be like, you know what? It's not true though. And she'll say things like that. So it's not that I believe it, but it just makes me shut down more of that person because they're not seeing me for who I am. They're making a value judgment upfront and knowing that I'm already reserved, it means that I then do not want to open myself up to you at all. it shows how you think of me already, or how you think of us as twins. So why would I ever wanna be a whole person in front of you? Rachel: Can you remember some specific examples of when people made those, judgements or opinions of you known? I: I think when I mostly see how they're seeing us differently, even if they don't say it out loud, is through eye contact. So if we're all free in a conversation, you're making more eye contact with her than me, then that's when I will be like, okay, they feel more comfortable with her. So they're really having the full conversation with her. Even if I'm talking, they're still looking at her. Then I'll just go quiet. Cause I'm like, oh, well you weren't really comfortable with me if I don't wanna make you uncomfortable by continuing to talk when it's clear that you have a preference. Rachel: I'm curious if you're with a friend, do you still register these kinds of social dynamics? Like are you looking for eye contact when you're with a group of three, two other people? I: No. No, I don't care. I could care less if she's not there. It doesn't, I don't, yeah, it's like, it's fine. You look where you look, but it's just something that I think I'm more sensitive to because I'm always with her. If I'm in a group with other people, I don't even care at all. Maybe I'll be a little bit more keyed in just because I feel like I'm more socially sensitive because I am a twin, but it's not in the same way that I'm reading it. When we're together, I'm reading it to be like, are we doing okay for them? Whereas if I'm by myself, it's like, is everyone doing okay? And maybe that sensitivity does come from always wanting to read people to make sure that we're not, I dunno, that we're performing to what they want. Which is like, you're nice but you're not too much and don't talk over each other. But if you can see in their eyes or their body language, they're uncomfortable, that for me—maybe I'm too empathetic—it just kills me. I can't stand that. So I'll just do whatever I need to do to make sure they're okay. Rachel: So it sounds like growing up you adopted this sense that your twinness was almost a burden for other people, or overwhelming. Do you remember some early lessons on that? I: It was not one moment where I was like, oh, we have to stop being who we are. There was just kind of a continual thing where you can just see a person kind of lose it or just tap out and you see their soul like go into the ether (Laughs). And so, my reaction is, I'm going to not talk to you so that you feel more comfortable. Cause I think there's maybe too much energy. Having two people stare at you alone is scary for people. To have both of us be present in that moment, because then you feel like four eyes are on you instead of two. So I think our responses are different to how we're going to navigate a person being overwhelmed. And my thing is always like, peace. Just be quiet. That way you can't be bewildered anymore. Rachel: I'm curious how this registers physically. Are you and A_____ very similar looking? Do you have the same way of moving around the world? I: Yeah, we dress very different. Her style is a lot freer and wilder than mine is. And mine is a bit more, I'll say conservative, but I don't really mean it that way. It's just more streamlined. I'm interested in things that are neater, more timeless. She'll take some wild chances and I'll be like, are you sure you wanna wear that today? And so I think that also tells people two different stories about who we are. When we were growing up, our style was more similar. And then from undergrad onward it changed. So how people are reading us is different. Hers is more loose. It's just very free. So I think people read that she's a very outgoing, free, open, affable, kind of wherever-the-wind-blows type of person, which is not entirely true. And then with me, the way that I dress tells them, and also my body language—I'm aware that I cross my arms a lot, I cross my legs. Which is just telling people “do not approach me.” And her body language is very legs open, arms here, so that people know to approach you. So I think that like, that physically reads different to people when we're sitting down and then,&nbsp; how we dress, they make different assumptions. And then also how we wear our hair. I prefer my hair a lot shorter. So I had a buzz cut for like three years. And then that also changed how people read our twinship remarkably, because all of a sudden it was like we weren't twins anymore. We were just sisters or cousins. And we're like, so the hair was the cue, not the face or anything else? And then even in that, because she has a lot longer hair, men would approach me and be like, I'm interested in your sister, not you. because of your hair. And I was like, why does it have to be one or the other? Do either one of us find you attractive? Like, so they would say some wild things And they'd be like, “Did you shave your hair so that people could tell the difference between the two of you?” And I hated that question, cause I was like, did I change my physical appearance for people that I do not know? No, I did not. But the fact that you actually think a twin would do that lets me know that you think we perform to a general public who doesn't understand our psychology at all. Rachel: What do you think it was about, undergrad being the time when you—you were in the same school with different classes? I: Yes. Rachel: And then same for high school. I: Yeah. Rachel: And then undergrad, did you go to the same— I: We did. Went to the same college. We were roommates the four years, but we had mostly different classes, but our major was the same. So then sometimes we do have classes together, and I don't mind having classes with my sister. I just don't like the way that people treat us when we're in classes together. We've had teachers out loud compare our poetry to each other in front of the class and be like, well, we both heard about horses, so what's going on with horses? And we're like, I'm sorry, what? And she would literally compare every single line or what the similarities were. And then everybody else in the class was like, jumping on the bandwagon. And I, I was about to lose it. Like, we're not happy at all. Because you would never compare any other students work together. And all of a sudden, because we have the same last name and we're twins, you feel that it's appropriate to not allow us to have distinct voices on the page, just looking at the similarities, looking at the way if they're one as opposed to two. And then that's when we were both like, I love you–don't love the situation. So as many classes we can have separate, let's just do that. Because apparently other people can't conduct themselves accordingly. Rachel: Yeah. And you're also missing out on the process of actually having your work evaluated in a way that anyone else would. I: Exactly. They'd be like, tell me, I'm seeing a throughline here, what happened in your childhood? The things that people were saying, it was infuriating. Cause I like having class with her. I like sitting next to her. I like hearing her talk or being able to read her poems. But I was also aware that when we are critiquing each other's work, because I am her twin, if I give her too many compliments, it seems like I'm doing it because we're related. And also I'm not gonna rail into her work in front of other people. I'll tell you that in private cause I respect you. But there were definitely times where if people were like railing in really hard and if it was unwarranted, I would just come for their necks and be like, we're not gonna do that today and you can call me what you wanna call me, but we're not gonna do that today. And so I was very aware that at that moment, I am being your twin sister and I'm going to stand up for you in a way that I would not do for someone else who I'm not related to in that way. But most of the time I tried not to do that so that people would see us as two students who just happened to be from the same family. That's it. Rachel: So you both were interested in the same things naturally. I: Yes. Rachel: And you felt like you could and should pursue those things even though the other person was. Did that ever create any tension or conflict? I: Um, not within us, but definitely for dance growing up. And this is like more of A_____’s thing to tell, cause it happened to her. People would compare us all the time and they would say things to her like, “Did your sister take all the talent in the womb?” You know, because as dancers we're two very different people. Our movement qualities are very different. And then our approach is different. Like, I attack things more than she does. That's just our personality traits. It's the thing of like growing up and like I'm ready to go. And she's not. That transfers into art too. Like, if I really want something, I'm passionate about it. Everyone in the room's gonna know that. And her thing is a bit more laid back, and so people would mistake her being laid back for being a lazy dancer. You're not trying hard enough. Why can't you be like your sister? And they said it enough times where she actually started to believe that she wasn't good enough. But because we were so young, we were not ever talking about it. So I see it happening, I see the comparisons. They're saying it in front of everybody else in the classroom, multiple teachers from five years old up until undergrad. And those comparisons are like, definitely took an emotional toll on her. And it was something that I can't stop. I can't stop the teacher from saying that. I can't stop them from reading a situation like this. They thought it was gonna put a fire under her and it did the complete opposite where it shut her down more. But then my thing was like, what am I supposed to do? Like I would tell her that's not true, but like you can see that it affected her and it sort of like compiled over the years. The way I always saw dance is, like, we're two separate people. So when I go into the room—not to be like do-or-die, but really ballet is—I was like, I fight for myself and you have to fight for yourself. I can't fight for you because it's literally your body, it does what you will it. And my body does what I will it. This is one situation where I cannot stand up for you. You have to be able to fight for yourself. And I think that our fight was just different. and if they sensed a little bit of weakness, they preyed on it. And that didn't add tension to our relationship, but I think that sometimes she would get upset by how committed I was to dance. Like I was like, I gotta stretch outside of class. I gotta do all these things. And for her it was kind of like, why would I do those things if they're just gonna tell me how terrible I am all the time? Like why even try anymore? And so that was a little bit of tension, but she never resented me for it, to her credit, at all. We understood that like it wasn't anything I was doing wrong, and it wasn't anything she was doing wrong. We're just two different people. And for some reason, the narrative that a lot of teachers had was we've got twins, and they’re like operating differently—you have to comment on that operation and you have to pull one down to bring the other up. I don't know, like, it never made me feel better. It made me feel worse. And then people were staring at me in class like I was the bad person because I was being lifted up on a pedestal and she wasn't. But then at the same time I was like, what am I supposed to do? Like the only way I can cope with it is to do better so that it makes both of us look good. But with dance, it literally doesn't do that. It just like furthers a divide in their mind. So I wasn't, I didn't know how to navigate that. And that's one of the things we spoke about for the first time, like a month ago, where she cried. Because she was like, it really did affect me. And I apologized for not knowing how to be there for her emotionally because we were both like—it was hard. Ballet was really like, you're getting critiqued all the time. They're telling you constantly how terrible you are. Like anything wrong with you, we know by the time you're like 10, you're like, “Got it. I know what I'm not good at. Tell me what I am good at.” So we're both going through it, but hers was different, and I'm still trying to fight for myself and she's trying to fight. But just realizing that she's a bit more tender than I am too. And I didn't know how to protect her. I didn't know how to, like, make her feel nurtured in that moment. Cause I was like, we both, we just gotta keep on fighting. But our capabilities for fighting and how we do that is very, very different. So that wasn't like tension inwardly, but it did cause her to have this sort of narrative, that I don't agree with, that she still has to work through now because of what people put on her really just because we're twins. Cause if I was not in the room with her growing up, they would not have said any of those things at all. And she would've been like, I'm a great dancer. And she would've felt a lot more confident. So that's one of those things where I felt bad, where I'm like, the best thing we can do is not take class together. But then we had a teacher who taught both of us separately and when she found out we were twins. She went to A_____ and was like, “Your sister's more fire and you’re water. You gotta be more fire.” And then it's just like, nope, she's water though. You can't tell water to be fire, that's not how it works! And she came back and told me and I was just like, well then you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. Like, just don't go to the same school anymore? Like I don't know how that works. So yeah, that was one of those moments that was really hard because of what adults put on us. Rachel: I'm curious about how that influenced your ability to take pride in what you were doing well. Cause obviously that's complicated. If you're doing well, it means that she's…So were you able to— I: No. You didn't talk about the wins at all. Cause it was clear that I had the win, but it didn't feel good. And so you just don't talk about it. You're just like, okay, well I know that I'm doing well, but, um, if it causes someone else pain, like, I'm not gonna go home and tell my mom like, you know, Miss Miana said that I did duh, da da da da. Like, I'm not gonna say that. I’m just gonna be like, yeah, it was a good dance class. And then, you know, you just kind of let it go from there. It's good cause it was humbling. I couldn't boast about it. Not that that's in my nature, but it kind of felt—I didn't feel guilty for being good at something. It just felt kind of like I had the resentment of other people in the class because of how my sister was treated and they kind of put what the teacher said on me like it was my fault. like in the locker room. I felt that. So I just go quiet and whatever I feel about dance, I'll just use my body to tell you that in the classroom. Rachel: So did you have concerns going into college and being in the same place and studying the same thing? That some of this might repeat itself? I: No, because it's a lot bigger. So our thing was always like, let's just take completely separate classes. That way none of that stuff happens. And I think in college it was a lot healthier because we were taking completely different ballet classes, different modern classes. People knew that we were twins in the department cause it was small enough. But no comparisons were made even if we were in dance pieces together. And I think this is kind of cute, they would make us do duets together. But we got to shine together for the first time. We're getting utilized for our strengths together. And so I think that that for me felt more wholesome. But it also meant that sometimes choreographers wouldn't want to take us cause they felt like it was a package deal. And they'd be like, I don't know if I really wanna commit to twins. And you're like, “Or you could just do it separately…” And we did have one choreographer who did that. We both auditioned and she chose me and not A____, and that furthered the narrative and rightfully so. My sister's pissed. Cause I was like, I think that we did the same amount of effort in that audition. I don't think there was anything different. I can't even tell you why she chose one of us over the other. I think sometimes they felt like, well, I like both of them, but I don't want two, so I'll just choose one. And I don't know how they make that decision, but that was definitely another moment where I was like, this isn't great. And I can't come back and be like, rehearsal was lovely. But A_____ was also good about being like, I want you to feel comfortable to say “I did have a good rehearsal” and “I am getting this solo,” or whatever it is, without me feeling—cause like, she didn't take it out on me. She just didn't like the choreographer for the way that she moved about it. And then afterward the choreographer was like very awkward around A_____ if she saw her in the hallway. And that kind of like furthered the thing of, if you're gonna make that decision with twins, own it. Don't act like—don't hide behind your decision, because you know what you did when you chose one and not the other. You know what you did. And most people would choose both of us. And then either they'd have us dance together or they'd be like, I want you to dance on complete opposite sides of the room so no one knows that you're twins. Rachel: Are there any ways in which you leaned into different things that you were good at so that there would be less to compare? I: The one thing we did for creative writing, we both majored in poetry for undergrad and then our mom was like, well if you're gonna go and get your MFAs and they're both in poetry and it's a very wide applicant pool, but they can only choose 15 poets per year, then you are literally each other's direct competition. And then we’re like, just think about that. It really does mean at that point that even if they like both of you, they might be like two _________ sisters? I don't know, might just take one. And so A_____ is also really good at fiction. I tried fiction, was terrible at it. She got a lot of praise for her fiction. And so my mom was like, just think about it. What if you switch to fiction? What does that feel like for you? No one pushed her into it. She says that we did, but we're like, you have free will. It was just an idea of like, don't be each other's direct comparison, because then people compare you even more. And it seemed that in writing, bec— I guess cause we're the ones creating it, people compared our writing more than they did necessarily our dancing. They expect two different bodies to move differently, but for some reason they expect twin minds to write similarly. So they were always looking for how we were the same. And so that was something that we both felt. And so she did, she switched to fiction and now she is a fiction writer. And sometimes she's like, I never wanted to write fiction. I'm still a poet. And I'm like, yeah, and you can write poetry, that's fine. I'm just saying that I guarantee that if we have two books out, there's gonna be some person out there that's still gonna be like, what's the through line? What's like the narrative here? What was your childhood like? I'm not gonna pretend that we're not interested in writing similar things. But the way that we write it is very different. And so I think that's one decision where we're like, someone's gonna have to bow out in some way so that people don't have our identities constantly tied in as being one person. Not because we see it that way, but because the world will not give us a fair shot otherwise. Rachel: So when A_____ was getting praise for fiction, and you said your fiction sucked, what did that feel like for you? What does it feel like when A_____ succeeds? I: I was very excited for her. People have told me that I'm good enough over the years where I have this sense of confidence that when I'm not good at something, I can take it on the chin and I can laugh at myself. Like I know I'm not good at certain things and I can laugh about it. Whereas I feel like with her it's more sensitive. So whenever she gets that thing, I'm gonna rally behind her and be like, this is amazing. And it makes me, like, more emotional than when I get a win because I know what that means for her and I know what her experience has been in art in general. Rachel: So to return to this college time. You said you started dressing differently in college—what other changes did that bring, being in a much bigger space? I: Well, definitely the style changed. She thinks a lot more about style than I do, and it actually got to a point where her and my mom were like, you don't have any style, and that's kind of an issue. (Laughs) And I was like, I don't really care. That's kinda like, I don't, I, the way that I feel about it is that I'm strong in who I am as a person. Not that she's not, but I feel very strong about, like, I can have a very strong personality. Like if you really know me, it's a very strong personality. I'm fire all the way. So I feel like when I dress, I'm not looking to exude anything more than what's already within me. But for her, because she can be water, I feel that when she dresses, it gives more of a pop. So that you're like, there's something more there. And she takes more pleasure in it. And she's very detail oriented with only shopping vintage and I'm like, I don't care if I get it off a rack. Doesn't matter as long as I like it. So that changed. And then in college… we had a lot of similar friends in college, So that's where we got some of our best friends and that's when it was always the three of us hanging out together. so I was grateful to actually be at the same college as her so that we could have best friends in common. Cause I think that that strengthens my bond with someone more so than if I have a bond with them by myself. That for me is a little bit more throwaway if I'm not crazy about it and she's not involved, I don't have to keep on showing up. I can just opt out. Rachel: Is there something about a friend knowing your sister that makes you feel closer to that person too? It's not just that there's this accountability thing? I: Yes, for sure. Yeah. it's like if I know that they love and accept my sister, then you'll get 200% of me. The litmus test is always like, if I introduce you to my sister, how do you behave? Cause I've had friends that have been very weird with her and I've been like, uh, not really that interested. Cause that was weird.and she wasn't into it. And if they're really great with her, then it'll make me feel even more of an affinity towards them. And that's just how it's always been. Where even with her friends, she'll want to introduce 'em to me. And how I interact with them means a lot to her in terms of how she interacts with them. Rachel: What are your friends—the ones that end up sticking around—what is their reaction when they meet—they know you, and then they meet your sister. I: I think being kind and open and not assuming anything about her because they know me. I think that's the best thing. Sometimes they've just been really awkward and they'll be like, hi. And then they'll just like walk away and I'm like, what are you doing? Have a conversation. Just be a human being around her. They've always been like male friends. They've just been weird. And so I'll be like, that's just the friend that I hang out with outside of you entirely. And she'll always have a little feeling about it. And I'll always be like, that was really strange. And I'll give them multiple times just to be like, maybe now you're comfortable with the idea of there being another person that looks like me. Rachel: Do you think it's because you look alike? Is that it? I: Yes. Yes. I think that's exactly what it is. For some people it's either like, I've known this person my whole life because you look like I_____. Or it freaks them out where they're like, you look like something that I know, but I don't know you on the inside. And then they react accordingly and it you just, you learn a lot from a person when you introduce 'em to your twin. Rachel: What about romantic relationships? How do you typically negotiate having that partnership, and then also your twinship. I: I've never dated. I've never been in a romantic relationship. I think it's cause I am very reserved and also just kind of like, I've enjoyed being single and focusing on my career. So I've never actually had to navigate that. And that's something we talk about all the time cause we're like, what happens then? Cause I wouldn't want her to feel not special, but then I also have to commit to this other relationship. And that person is also very special to me, but just in very different ways. And that's something that I, I don't know how it's gonna go, what that's gonna like, feel like or be like for her and for me. But one thing I know for sure is that whoever I date and my sister have to be best friends. Like, they should be comfortable hanging out without me. And that's a for sure, for sure. Where she should be like a sister for him too. And if that, I'm not saying you have to hang out all the time, I'm just saying like, if I'm outta town, feel free to hang out without me, I'm not gonna have any beef about it. But if they can't relate, that would be a huge, like, nope. Not interested. Rachel: Because you have all these things in common, your interests are in common, but they haven't come without some tension or conflict, at least from the outside. How did you decide to collaborate on things? Can you tell me about that and what that process is like? I: We've choreographed together and we fight all the time. (Laughs) Um, I think that there's this narrative for me of like, well, I'm a dancer first, and I'm a choreographer second, so I'm not really that invested in it compared to where she's a great choreographer. But I think there's always this thing of like, she wants to be the performer too, not just the person who's putting together the steps. So she has this thought process of I want you to put in as much as I do as a choreographer, and I want us to both dance and, and be seen as performers. And my thing is like, everyone has different roles. Some people are better choreographers than they are dancers and vice versa. And of course, I put forth my best effort. I noticed that she's a way better choreographer than me and so why not have you take the lead on that as opposed to me muscling my way through something terrible for you to then say like, no, I don't like that. because she's really good at it, I'm asking her to lean into it. But she thinks I'm also saying you're not the dancer then. You're not the performer, you're the choreographer. And she doesn't want that role. She wants to be seen as well. And so I think that's where the tension lies. And then there comes a thing of like, well, this is my choreography versus your choreography. I'm always like, no, it's our choreography because we're doing it together. And so I think that she does take pride in those moments of like, well, I did this thing and this was a good thing that I did. And I'm always like, yes. But, teamwork though. Because then I completed the phrase. But I guess it's easy for me to say that as someone who's acknowledging that I'm kind of tagging along to her main experience. But I think that that tension, that's the only time we collaborate that it comes together. I've also been like, would you wanna write a book together? And she was like, yes, but not until way down the line so that we're not giving people ample opportunity to compare us. We would like to have completely separate literary careers. And then if we make the choice to collaborate, that's our choice. But that's not something that somebody else puts on us or expects because we're twins. Rachel: How does it feel to finish something or to be working on something that you're thinking is going really great on your own, versus those more collaborative experiences? I: It feels good because there's more ownership of it. I had to show up and I'm the one who did that thing and then there's a payoff for that. And so that feels really nice. But honestly, whatever she does on her own, I get more happiness from watching her succeed in that than I do when I do something. And that's just always how it's been. So when we collaborate together, it brings me so much joy because I'm getting to see her in real time, do this thing with me. Even if we're fighting, I don't care. I'm like, fine, I'll take it. I don't care. It just makes me happy to be able to see her in the studio. How she creates that makes me happy. Like she gets more emotional. I have my poetry collection's gonna be published this year, and when she found out, she cried and she was like, really? Like that meant a lot for her. And it would be the exact same for me for her. Like when she got her agent, I fully lost it. And I was like, this is a great day for everybody in the whole world. That's just what our parents taught us. Is when she wins, I don't see it necessarily as my win, but like that win means so much more to me than when I win. Or if we can win together, that's the best. So I'm cool if I make a win, but I don't really talk that much about it. Maybe it is cause of ballet and it's just like, don't talk about the thing that you did good. But I very much enjoy like, being, doing things differently and seeing her in a dance piece without me. I love that cuz then I get to tell her what I loved about her performance as opposed to being in it with her. Rachel: Right. The feeling is a little bit more simple in a way. Like uncomplicated and pure. I: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. For sure. Rachel: I think you mentioned when we were first talking, the way your experience of twinship has changed over time. How would you describe some of those evolutions? I: I think having more emotional intelligence now, we know how to talk through things or acknowledge what happened as kids. You're still living through it. And I was not a huge talker growing up. I was just like, yeah, it happened and you just keep on fighting. And her thing was just very different cause she's just softer. And so I think that she needed to have those talks or to say it out loud, where I was just like, nope, just gotta go back into battle. It's just what qarriors do. And so that's just kind of also how we're different. So now that we're older, I'm able to tell her this is what I need out of communication and she's able to tell me what she needs and then I can mirror the behavior that she's asking me for to the best of my ability. And learning how to, like, more give and take as opposed to saying, this is just who I am, never gonna change. When I was younger, I'm like, this is just who I am. So if you don't like it, sorry. And that's not a healthy way to work. So I've learned in my relationship with her, that I hope I can take to romantic relationships, is how to be with someone and how to negotiate the fact that you are two very different people. And even though we were in the same household growing up, the way that we move in the world and the way that we see the world is different. And so if I can't come to some sort of way of working with her as a team that works for both of us, then I'm being a selfish partner in this relationship. And so I'm learning how to be more selfless. But I think being more open to work together and make sure that it's a healthy relationship and also talk more. Saying things we haven't said for years and then, you know, have that disagreement, but then keep on talking about it over and over again so that you come to the other side of it as opposed to leaving things unresolved. Actually just saying hey, you know what? I'm actually feeling this way about our relationship in general and I wanna talk about it now, even though I know it's not gonna make you feel good and it's not gonna make me feel good. We owe it to ourselves to say, this is how I see the situation. You tell me how you see it. I repeat back what I'm hearing you say, you repeat back what you were hearing me say. And then we come to some sort of resolution that feels equal for both of us. And then I think also realizing, and this is a huge, what I tell her all the time is, life is never gonna be 50-50. So there's gonna be times where I'm gonna have to show up more in this relationship because she's got more on her plate or vice versa. And not not getting upset with the other person for not being able to show up in the same way that you are because they have other things happening in their life. Cause I'm like, yes, we're twins. But our life paths are very different. Even though we do similar things, our jobs are different. The way that our work schedules are completely different. So there are certain things that she can show up for that I'm like, I don't have a bandwidth for it right now. Maybe five years I will, but right now I do not. I think that's been a huge thing as twins, cause people always make it seem like it's even right? And it's like, that's literally not how life works. I'm dealt cards that she's not dealt. I don't hate that she's not dealt that card. I don't want her to be dealt that card. But I need her to be more patient with me if I am being dealt a card that I'm still trying to work through. And then vice versa. Rachel: But you are now at a point where you have these conversations out loud with each other. I: Yes. Yeah. They'll be like three-hour long screaming matches. But yeah, we have—my thing is like, I'll tell the truth and I'm not, I don't mean as a judgment, I just mean it as like. this is how I see it. But because she's more sensitive, she takes it as a judgment. And so then that's when the miscommunication happens. So I have to like temper how I say things or when I say it so that she can take it better from me. And that's been a huge point of our relationship, is my bluntness reads cold. When I'm just trying to, like, help you by saying like, this is a trait I've seen that I don't think that you want to exhibit. But I'm not asking you to change. I'm just saying this is what I notice. And so I am learning how to speak in a different way where she can take it that is completely opposite to how I'm naturally built. And she also has to understand that I can only meet her a certain way there. I'm never gonna have the sweetest words when I just really need to say the thing out loud. Rachel: Can you tell me a little bit about the time when you were leaving college. the transition from—we're in high school together, we're in college together, we live together. What happens then? How did you say, okay, now we are in the world. Where do we go? I: Exactly. Uh, we were applying to jobs and we were like, look, we wanna be artists, but you can't just get outta college and be like I'm gonna make money off my art. That's not how it works. So we both bit the bullet and got nine-to-five jobs, but even that journey was different. I got a job immediately, within a matter of weeks, and she did not. And so I was commuting from New Jersey to New York City for a year. And I hated that job. And I was crying like every single time I came home. It was so corporate. I had to wear, like, a button-down and slacks. And I'm like, who is this person? I hate her. She's not me. I'm the only person of color in my entire department of like 50 people. This is all very not it for me. And then her journey was, I still don't have work. So you know, like how can she support me emotionally when I am, like my bandwidth is just—I don't even have it anymore. So I'm like, I cannot be here for you. I'm a hollow person when I come home, cause I'm giving everything I have to a job that I do not like. And then when she did get a job, hers was at a literary agency, very anxiety inducing. So my thing was like, I'm sad all the time and you're anxious, and how can we support each other? And then we got this apartment in the middle of that and then it was like trying to show up for each other while the house is burning down and you're like, ah, I don't want this. And we were applying to MFAs at the same time cause we were like, we don't want this life, so let's have the out. And then going to get the MFA was like, oh I can breathe again for two years. That's great. And then the same thing happens again after you graduate from the MFA. You're like, what's the job I'm getting? And the same thing happened. I got this amazing job in a non-profit. The workload is insane and my bandwidth just doesn't exist anymore. Cause I'm giving everything to my job and I'm like, I'm not a person anymore. So it's just the hollow shell. When I come home, I'm like, I can't do all the nice things for you. I can't be nice and talk and I, I'm done. And she took more time to find jobs that, like, she really wanted to curate an experience. And I'm like, that's great. That's your thing. You do that. And so work schedules are different. Workloads are different. And then that means that the way that we show up is different. Cause I told her, like for me, when I get really tired with work, socially I'm dead. I'm not gonna be able to text our friends back and be like, that's amazing. Like she ends up doing all the texting for both of us and then I'll just chime in with a heart emoji cause I'm like, I am not a person anymore. And so her not resenting me for not being able to show up, but then how much more can I expand myself? It's like all those things where I'm like, I'm not always gonna be in this position. You might be in a different position than I am in two years. And then I'll have to show up socially and do all the texting and, and make sure that the house is clean and all that stuff. Rachel: And you have stayed, you live together. Have you ever lived apart? I: No. Rachel: Has that ever been something that you've talked about? I: Not really interested in it. We're so used to waking up in the same room that I, I really told her, I was like, if we lived in separate rooms, not even separate houses, just separate rooms, would you wake up at the same time as me? Because if I go to sleep, she'll be like, you know what, I'm tired too. I'll go to sleep. I'm like, are you tired or you just going to sleep cause I'm going to sleep? And so like our schedule is really much like around each other. And so not living together, it would be fine. I'd be open to it, but I would definitely miss her. And it's not that we even talk a lot when we're here, we're mostly quiet and just like, you do your work, whatever. But yeah, like two times a day I'll just be like, hey, I miss you. I'm gonna go back to the room. Cause it's just like, I do. And so I think that that would be—that's obviously going to happen eventually, but I'm enjoying being able to be with her for as long as I can. Rachel: Do you share a room right now? I: We do, yeah. Not by choice. It's just because it's a one bedroom and we can afford it. So I was like, I dream of having my own room because there's not enough closet space. And so that's also a huge argument we have all the time about who has the most clothes and how is that gonna go. I'm like, if we just had two bedrooms and two bathrooms, then we could just like have our own space. So the goal would be to get a bigger place we could both live in. And then from there, you know, once we get married, I'd like us to still be close to each other cause I want our kids to grow up together. But acknowledging fully that I don't expect to live with her the rest of my life. Rachel: Do you have similar preferences for how to arrange a home? Has that ever been an issue since you share all your spaces? I: She's under this thing where she's like, she's cleaner than me, which has never been the case. We're both even on cleanliness. But she's very precise. If I'm doing the laundry on Monday and I have the buggy and it's in the hallway, I have to clean the hallway floor in here so that I'm not bringing the outside dirt in our apartment. I think that's a little insane. But if that's what I have to do every time I do the laundry, that is what I do every time I do the laundry. I think in terms of how we built it, our style was pretty much the same, but we definitely had talks where I was like, well if it was my space I would do duh duh duh, and she wants something that's a bit—it's kind of like our personal styles in terms of how we dress. She would want something more like that. I like that, that's not fully what I like, but I like that. So choosing wall color and stuff like that, it was pretty easy cause we both have similar aesthetics, but I'm excited to see what my own room would look like if I get to choose everything. That would be different. Rachel: Yeah. That'll be really interesting to see. What is the longest you've ever spent apart? I: Um, maybe like, uh, two or three days when we would have to go out with separate school trips for overnight field trips or whatever. Her class would go a different week than mine, two or three days. Cause everything else was pretty much, we were at the same place at the same time. Rachel: Do you find that when you are apart, even if it's just for an afternoon or a day or something, your affect is the same as it would be the rest of the time? I: Yeah, it's the same. It's just that when I come back, I'm excited to see her face. Even if I go to work and I come back, we're both like, I missed you. How was your day? We always do that, and I genuinely mean it too. Rachel: That's so nice. That's really, really sweet. I: Thank you. Rachel: Are there any things as you were thinking about this conversation that came to mind as significant examples of the complexity of this relationship? I: Yeah. I mean, one big one, and this is also her thing to tell, but that she has scoliosis and I don't. And that meant that growing up she had to wear a back brace for 21 hours a day, and that is an experience I will never understand. And that was, this happened when we were teenagers too. So that was also rough for her to, like, your body is changing as an adolescent. and you have to wear—it's like a, it's a plastic brace that covers your entire upper body. So she had to wear looser clothes that you wouldn't see the shape of the brace underneath. So all of that was happening, right at adolescence, on top of dance stuff. I will never understand what that felt like for her to wear that back brace. When we had PE class, you have to take the back brace off and like put it in the bleachers, so everyone would see it in class. So she just told everyone in class and was like, we're all gonna sit down. I'm gonna have a little show and tell. And she took off her brace and she's like, this is how it works. Just so you know. That takes a lot of balls to do that when you're an adolescent and be like, I have a thing that's very different about me than anybody else. I'm gonna willingly tell you about that so that you're not talking behind my back or making assumptions. And so that was probably like the biggest point in growing up where I'm like, oh, we are not the same and our life experiences will not be the same and this will change us. Because her having to go to all those doctor visits, and they wanted to do surgery, which means she wouldn't be able to dance anymore. And our mom was like, she's gotta dance. So then she went to rehab in Milwaukee and I went with her. But even me trailing along, I didn't have to do the exercises she had to do. I got checked for scoliosis, I don't have it. So it's like all these things that she has to think about, even like getting pregnant, just being aware of that weight on her spine. In dance that came up all the time because of the difference in the legs. One's a little bit, hip was higher than the other. And having teachers say it over and over again and she's like, I get it. I have scoliosis. And I'll never understand the details of like, the breath work she had to do, getting back spasms like every day where she would just have to lay on the bed, cause they're trying to retrain your back to grow in a different direction and it was painful, and all these things. And you have to sleep in it too. In the summer it's hot and you get like rashes, all this stuff. I'll never understand that. And that was one point where I was like, I wish I knew how to show up for you right now. But because it's so different, I have nothing to compare it to. So all I can do is watch her go through this and see how hard it is, but there's nothing I can do that's gonna take that experience away from her. And so that was definitely like a huge point in our relationship that I didn't know how to talk about it either. I didn't know how it made her feel and she didn't talk about how she felt. I just know that she was angry that she had to go through that. But she also had a lot of grace about how she dealt with it. And so we only started talking about that when we were adults. And then she was like, you didn't show up for me emotionally. And I was like, yeah, I did not, because I was also a teenager and I didn't understand. And anytime I would try to talk to her about it, she would just like shut down. And so I was like, I don't know how to broach this topic because it's a world of hurt and being different at a time in your life where you don't necessarily wanna be that different or not for that reason. And so that was one thing that I have a lot of sympathy, and I also feel like it made her a stronger person. And I don't think that I could have handled the way that she did, Rachel: Do you have a sense of why you didn't talk about it when you were younger? I: I was really emotionally closed off when I was younger, I think because from dance I learned how to protect myself emotionally so you don't get hurt by feedback. And so I carried that in everything that I did. Where like, it was just a wall, it was impervious, like nothing's gonna hit me. So I wasn't gonna have that conversation with her. And I also was taking my cues off of her, so I was like, if you wanna talk about it, we can talk about it. But she didn't wanna talk about it, so I was like, I'm witnessing you go through this. But that seems to be about it. I'm just a witness here. Like I don't know anything more than anybody else in our class knows about how she feels about it because we're not really talking about it. I know her exercises she has to do. I know that she doesn't wanna do them every night. I know that it hurts her, but beyond that, I don't know what that interior life was like. And even when we were at the rehab center, she met two other young adolescent girls that also had scoliosis. So they did it together and they became best friends for many years because they had gone through that experience at the same time. And that was one of those things where I was like, I'm on the outside here. And they had to actually go to therapy, the three of them together, and they had the option if they wanted the parents and me to be in therapy with them or not. And then they were like, well, definitely not the parents. And I was like, can I just come in therapy? And she was like, absolutely not. And so that for me was like, there's the door and I'm not gonna try to open anymore because what you're telling me is you want to experience this separate from me. So my thing was like when she's ready to talk about it, we can, but I guess she was also waiting for me to ask her questions about it. And I didn't know what to ask cause I didn't wanna offend her. Because she felt like it does change the way that her abdomen is. Like one side is curvier, one side is straighter. And for her, that's like a huge point of not feeling great about herself physically, even to today, where now I know okay, I'm gonna champion her every time she wears bikini and I let her know how beautiful it is. But at the same time, that's her body. That's not mine. So I can't tell her how to feel about a difference that I've never had before. So I'm still learning how to talk about it in a way. Cause for a long time I was just so scared she was gonna like get upset with me for saying the wrong thing. Cause I didn't know anything. I didn't even know what kind of curve she had. I didn't know how many degrees off it was. When they said it progressed, I thought that was positive. And she's like, no, you want it to regress? And I was like, cool. I know so little about what you are experiencing. Rachel: What did it feel like when you weren't allowed to go to therapy with her and the other girls? I: It felt like she was wielding her one power in this situation over me of being like, nope, you don't get to do this thing that the rest of us have to do. And I was like, that's fine. You know what I mean? Like I get it. I totally get it. I was just interested. I'd never gone to therapy before. I was like, what are they gonna ask these teenage girls about? But I was just, I was like, let's make it fun. You know what I mean? But then she would also be like, upset that while she was in physical rehab, my mom and I would go to the mall, for example. Cause it was both of our spring break. And so my mom didn't want me to feel like I wasn't having a proper spring break, even though we were there to support my sister. But it was my decision to go with her. I didn't wanna not go with her. I wanted to experience as much of it as I could so that I could root alongside her. But she made it a little hard because of the wall. So it's just like, I'm just a witness. But you want me to be more than that. Whenever I do it seems I say the wrong thing. Rachel: I'm curious, you mentioned you were with your mom, I know you said when you were younger you were always with each other and your parents. As you got older, did your relationships evolve to be more distinct with your parents? I: Oh, for sure. Yeah. I call my mom like two or three times a day and A_____ does not at all. Mom's always like, how is she doing? I haven't heard from her. I'll be their go between. And then with our dad, my sister's a little bit closer with my dad, she's like his best buddy. And normally we butt heads a bit more. So any time I'm gonna go for it, she's in ready-to-nurture-him mode and she's always his go-to best buddy. That's how it works. So it's definitely changed over the years, where I'm always like, why don't you call mommy more and just talk to her? And she's like, I don't really feel like it. So our ways of communicating or relating to them are different. But then our dad, he's still on the even thing. So he'll text us both every single morning to let us know how much he loves us. Every single morning. Yeah. And it's like, I, I, yeah. I love this man. I ride for him hard, even though we fight, I still ride for him and, but she's you know, they'll talk more over the phone than we will. Or she'll text him back more than I will. So it's different the way that we communicate with our mom versus our dad. Rachel: What questions do you have for other twins? What are you curious about? I: Yeah, I'm curious what they love about being twins, because I think the world takes so much away from us by the time you're born, with the association of being a twin, and they place things on you. I'm curious what other twins genuinely love about being twins and no one told you to love. The thing that makes you smile about being a twin versus just being a sibling. That I'm interested in. Cause I know a lot of twins growing up that completely separate, didn't have any of the same friends, didn't talk to each other, didn't associate with each other, or they would get in like really bad fights. And my sister and I were never like that. And so I felt kind of like the world had taken their joy of being twins away and they didn't know how to get that joy back or even experience how special it can be being a twin. Rachel: If you had to name the thing that you love the most about being a twin, what would it be? I: She just knows me. I feel like, cause we went through life at the same time, we experienced things together at the same rate. So the way that she knows me is a way that nobody else will know me. We just get each other. There's no awkwardness. I can be whoever I wanna be at any time. And she accepts it and then she matches me there. And so I think that that kind of like unconditional love, but also the knowing, she just knows who I am through and through. I don't see that in other siblings necessarily. Rachel: So there's a question I like to throw out at the end. When do you feel most like yourself? I: When I'm happy and well rested, that's when I feel like myself. Yeah. Sleep is really important to me. So if I don't sleep and if I'm really tired, I feel like I lose myself more and more. And when I get proper sleep, I feel that I can be as big as I can be as a person. And that's when I feel like fully me. Rachel: Well, as a follow up because you share a room with your sister. Does she feel that way too? Do you respect sleep in the same way? I: Oh, sleep for her is even more important than it is for me. She sleeps longer than I do, generally speaking. Also cause our work schedules, I like will wake up at like 5:00am in the mornings depending on what my workload is for that day. And so I'm not always getting eight hours of sleep. And so with the job that I have now, I felt that I've lost myself more and more because of the lack of sleep, where I just feel kinda like a robot when I wake up as opposed to a full person with a beating heart. And so what I've done recently is I've prioritized, like you're gonna get at least eight hours, and then I have to make up for all of the sleep that I've lacked, cause there's a debt there. So I'm sleeping more and every day I feel more like my kid self again. And that for me is when I feel I can be free and not have all the responsibility of an adult just on my shoulder, I feel like, I'm me again. &nbsp; A.G., I.G.’s twin, was also interviewed. Listen here. <img width="1000" height="1519" width_o="1000" height_o="1519" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4580e812fa9e63e579c27c8506b997aa038939c3219f04ed35f2498422049d58/Photo_2023-12-26_154901.png" data-mid="200157618" border="0" data-scale="76" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4580e812fa9e63e579c27c8506b997aa038939c3219f04ed35f2498422049d58/Photo_2023-12-26_154901.png" /> Previous&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Next https://likeness.ing/T Tue, 02 Jan 2024 23:32:14 +0000 Likeness https://likeness.ing/T T.Themes: sisters, friendship, competition, mythmaking, mental health&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Interview with T by Rachel Smith 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&nbsp; 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&nbsp; 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&nbsp; 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. <img width="4032" height="3024" width_o="4032" height_o="3024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/32d944de3e3c60372b27fb0d4c03e2dc37fd3ef025058ac84d60ae2cd1bf3c64/IMG_5563.png" data-mid="200595879" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/32d944de3e3c60372b27fb0d4c03e2dc37fd3ef025058ac84d60ae2cd1bf3c64/IMG_5563.png" /> Previous&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Next https://likeness.ing/Izumi-N Wed, 26 Feb 2025 00:33:10 +0000 Likeness https://likeness.ing/Izumi-N Izumi N.Themes: childhood, friendship, fighting, gender identity&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Izumi N. by Rachel Smith This interview has been slightly condensed and edited.&nbsp; Rachel: Please introduce yourself for the recording in whatever way you feel comfortable. Izumi: Hi, I'm Izumi. I'm 25 years old. I actually just turned 25 on the 11th of April, so I still have my party favors up. I should probably take that down. It's about time. I grew up outside of the city and both my twin and I went to college in Seattle and that's why we've moved here and we since stayed in Seattle. Rachel: Great, thank you. So can you just start by telling me when and where you were born? Izumi: I was born in San Francisco in '98, and we were born really prematurely, actually. We were born, I think, about like a month and a half early. So we were incredibly preemie. I was two pounds and my twin was two and a half pounds, and we spent the first month in the NICU. Rachel: Did the fact that you were preemies influence how you were treated by your family or how you even saw yourselves growing up at all? Izumi: I feel like I wasn't really super aware of it till later in life, so, so short answer, no. But it is really interesting to ask my mom about it 'cause her water broke. They lived in northern California about an hour and a half away from San Francisco. The university hospital that we were born at, her water broke. And so she had to stay in bedrest. They had to drive her down to the university hospital where they could take preemies that little. And she had to be on bedrest for, like, two weeks at least before she had us. And I think more than it influenced how we were treated, I'm starting to learn there are, like, neurological things that can go on in your body if you were incredibly preemie. So that's been kind of cool to learn about, especially I think it's sensory sensitivity, which really tracks for me. Like, I can't be smelling weird things. And actually when we were born, I was, I had a brain aneurysm so I almost didn't pull through. And that's something I think I've been thinking about more as I've gotten older, especially through songwriting and stuff, too. What kind of impact that has on how I view myself and my twin. Rachel: Do you wanna say any more about that? What are some of the things that have been coming up for you around that topic? Izumi: Mm, just thinking like, oh, if I had been not a twin and born with that condition, I wonder if I would've survived. I wonder if there's something about being a twin that could have helped me survive, or what it would've been like for my twin if I hadn't. What would childhood have been like for them and for the rest of the family. Rachel: Speaking of childhood, can you talk to me a bit about what it was like growing up in your family? Izumi: We were the only kids of my parents, so it was just the two of us. Mom, dad, me, twin, Our parents didn't put us in the same things or the same color outfit every time. My twin was actually telling me that they looked through old photos and for a long time they thought they were, like, the purple and blue twin. They thought I was the pink and orange twin. But they looked through photos and realized like, oh, our parents actually just swapped us out whenever. It wasn't really a set thing, which is – Sorana said it was actually kind of a paradigm shift for them. They were like, wait, I'm the pink twin too. Yeah. For two parents, the two-on-two relationship, the twins are gonna win. You want your kids to do chores? Twins say no (Laughs). Especially if your parent set is not as unified as, well, no parent set is gonna be as unified as a twin set. So they were at a loss. Rachel: So you and your twin would rebel together as a united front? Izumi: Not, like, rebel, but if there was something we were, like, not cool with, we were gonna make that clear. And especially when we were older, I think there was a time when we were both like, "You guys know we had a fucked up childhood, right? And our parents were like, "What? No. Really? What?" And Sorana and I were like, "Yeah, we're gonna go if you guys try and ignore that." And they were like, "Oh shit. Okay. The twins are right." Rachel: What are some of the memories that come up for you when you think about childhood growing up as a twin? Izumi: Mm. Going to play at the beach together a lot. We had a friend who lived down the road, so the two of us would go pick her up on our bikes. We'd go down and say, "Hey, let's go play." And we'd just, all three of us would just be swimming at the beach all day and eating candy. Lots of candy. Um, I remember I did ballet as a little kid, probably, like, seven or eight, and my twin did not. So Sorana would go and get Starbucks with my mom while I was in the lessons, and they wouldn't tell me that they went and got a treat while I was doing my ballet lessons, which I honestly think is really cute. Other childhood memories, I mean, sad ones are like my friends comparing us to each other when we were little, more like middle school-y times, you know? Middle school is really not cute. It's a – whew! Yeah, being compared like, “Oh, you're the cooler twin,” or, “Oh, you're the prettier twin,” or whatever. So I felt like that was something we really were luckily able to move away from as we got older. Normal adults don't pull that kinda shit. Rachel: When that sort of thing was happening when you were in middle school and just kids being not nice, what did that do to you and your sense of yourself? Did you start to have thoughts that were influenced by those comparisons? Izumi: Yeah, definitely. On the one hand of, like, feeling good if you're given the compliment of being the better half, like, "You're prettier, you're skinnier, you’re funnier," whatever, whatever it may be. On the one hand, feeling glad about that in a way, but also feeling a deep sense of guilt. Why would someone say that? Just feeling extremely sad for my twin about it. ‘Cause in that sense I'd know that the roles reversed, I'd know exactly how I would feel if I were in that position because it's your twin. Rachel: Were there certain roles or reputations that you both took on as kids? Izumi: I think between the two of us Sorana was, Sorana is the visual arts twin and I'm the music twin, which are less roles and more of hobby things, you know? Our parents didn't really try to force us to do the same thing or compete against each other ever, which I'm so grateful for. Oh my God, I can't imagine being a twin pitted against your twin in sports or something. My God. Sorana I think took on as a role, probably more of the book smart. I mean, both of us excelled in school and we kinda held it down. I don't really see us as two sides of the same coin or anything. There wasn't a rebel kid and a book-smart kid. We both kind of followed the same path. Just, um, Sorana did a little bit more in the way of academic rigor. And socially, I guess, Sorana was definitely more of a cautious twin. Like, I had a time where I had friends that were a little more reckless, wanted to go out, wanted to sneak out, wanted to party, wanted to play with older kids and whatever. And Sorana was always like, "Okay, this is kind of sketchy," and so really kept me in line in a way. And I know there was a time when they, like, snitched on me. They're like, "Izumi went to go drink with all their friends." And my parents actually, um, a rule in my house before the sex talk was "the snitches get stitches" talk. So the snitching wasn't kindly received and I did not really get in trouble for that. But I think Sorana kept me, looked out for me. Definitely. Even if I thought it was nagging at the time, like, kept me safe. Rachel: Can you talk to me more about friends and how your social lives worked? Izumi: Um, through elementary school, I think we pretty much had the same set of friends and it wasn't really, it was pretty seamless. It was just, the twins are gonna hang out. We didn't have to figure out who's friends with who or whatever. And we grew up in a small town anyway, so it was generally like that for most of our childhood. In high school with extracurriculars and stuff, we did have separate friend groups through that. Sorana had swim team, I had the cross country/track friends. But in middle school I think it was interesting 'cause there were times when I wanted to hang out with my friends alone or wanted to hang out with one of our friends that we shared. But I wanted to hang out with them without Sorana. Not in the sense that I wanted to exclude them but, you know, you want some one-on-one time with a friend. And I think it was a lot harder for Sorana in those situations, especially if I was gonna go hang out with a group of people, Sorana always wanted to tag along and I didn't know how to set a boundary of like, "Hey, can it be okay if I hang out with these people, without you sometimes?" especially with small town stuff, 'cause it's like, "Wait, but those are my friends, too." And that's really hard to figure out how to say as a kid. I never knew how to do it, so we'd definitely get in a lot of fights about it. And, and looking back on it now, I feel really sad for Sorana. I was like, oh, of course they'd wanna hang out. That's really sad. And I don't know if I give myself the same level of forgiveness of like, oh, that's actually very normal and healthy to wanna hang out with your friends without your twin all the time. Rachel: Would you say that you two were friends? Did you think of yourselves as having a friend relationship in addition to being twins? Izumi: Oh yeah, definitely. Uh, yeah. For example, we played a lot of my Littlest Pet Shop, you know, the little animal figurines with the magnets. We loved that shit. Oh my God, I kind of wanna go back and play it, honestly. Play imagination with these little figurines, 'cause that was the most fun. And we had our, like our characters were all developed. They had the other characters they got along with or did not get along with. And other kids would come and try and play with us and they’d fuck it all up. They wouldn't know any of the characters and it was just a mess. We did not like it when other kids played with our Littlest Pet Shops. That was a me and Sorana activity. Kind of same with video games. We weren't really ever video game kids so we were always at the same level of being able to play with each other. But if another kid came and played, they would kick our ass so hard at video games or, like, if we went to someone else's house to play video games, we were always really trash. But definitely friends and coming up with, I think the imagination games especially as a kid, that was what we played together a lot. Like with the hose, we would pretend that we were water witches or in Harry Potter. And I'd say as we've gotten older, I would say we're probably even closer friend-vibes. We call it “twin time” now. We're like, "Okay, I need twin time. Let's hang out." Rachel: Can you talk to me about twin time? What does that look like? Izumi: Twin time – either Sorana comes over to my house or I go over to their house 'cause they live, like, 15 minutes away from me by car. So the space is good. We lived together up until 2021 when I moved out of the house that we were all living in, in south Seattle, which was what I call “Covid jail.” But after that our relationship got a lot better once we were living in different places. Whew. Yeah. Um, space is good. Space is good, but twin time is now extra fun 'cause it's like, oh, you were having a bad day. Why don't you come over and we can hang out and, I don't know, we'll smoke weed and we can hang out. Sometimes we'll go to, like, the vintage store or just bop around. It's not really planned. It's just like, let's hang out, let's do twin time and cackle and make fun of things. Rachel: How does “twin time” compare to time spent with a good friend? Izumi: Maybe more relaxed, even though obviously, like, close friends you feel relaxed with no matter what. Twin time has a little more open-ended, I guess, about what we're gonna do. Like, when you plan to hang out with your close friend you kind of wanna have an idea of what you're going to do sometimes versus, if I'm having twin time, I'll just go over to Sorana's house and lay on the floor and pet the cat. And that's kind of it. Just more relaxed, more mi casa su casa, you know? I just go over and hang out. They come over here and you're kind of part of the household. Rachel: So I wanna come back to moving from living together to living apart. But before we get there, I'm curious about this time when you were growing up and maybe like middle school, high school time. How does your relationship as twins evolve as you two are evolving as people? Izumi: I think we fought the most in high school just 'cause we were the busiest. I think the less busy we were, the more relaxed we were. But Sorana's the 20 minutes late twin, I'm the 20 minutes early twin. If you have to get to school at 7:45, you're bound to fight in the car a little bit. When there was a lot of stress in our lives, when we were really bogged down with a lot of things to do, our relationship got more strained. A lot of it was about timing and what starts as an argument about being on time to something, or like, "Let's go, we have to go. Come on." Or, "I'm not ready yet. Gimme a sec. I don't have this, or that," kind of devolves into, "Why are you always like this? Why is this always what you do?" You know, non-sequitur argument that just kind of blows up. So, that was a hard time. But as we went to the same college, we went to UW, we lived in different dorms, and at that time there was probably the first couple quarters I wanted to really not hang out with them too much and go find new people and what have you. And I think that was kind of a similar time of where Sorana was like, "Hey, I'm lonely. Come hang out with me. Can we do stuff together?" And ultimately, I definitely, we didn't grow apart or anything like that. And I think we started hanging out more regularly at towards the end of the first year. And then after that we lived together all throughout college. And I think having other people in the mix in our household kept us kind of on the straight and narrow, like not fighting and devolving too much, seeing how other people were reacting to things, would help us kind of cool our jets. I think that's something we're still kind of working on, is if we are in kind of a tense moment or stressed out, it's really easy to get the other person keyed up and activated as well, and things can just devolve, like, especially in the car. I think we kind of had a breakthrough the other day. We were both really tired and hungry and coming home from our parents' house, we were both really stressed out about making the ferry back to Seattle. And we were starting to argue and we were like, wait, let's not. You can put on your headphones. I'm gonna put on mine while we're on this ferry ride. We'll just ride it out. I'll drop you off and then we won't, let's just not talk. And that's the only thing that works to prevent the fight. Being able to step outside of yourself and take a beat. I think we've both gotten better at that as we've gotten older. Less fighting, more twin time. Rachel: That sounds like a good trend. When you were fighting a lot in high school, what did it look like to come out of that fight? Did you talk about it or did you just go back to the way things were? How did those fights resolve themselves? Izumi: I think it was based on time, like a lot of growing up through childhood, our parents were trying to, like, nip it in the bud, like, "Don't fight, calm down. What if one of you died right now?" Just bizarre shit. Like, "What if there was an earthquake, and what if you got crushed and that was the last thing you ever said to each other?" What? God, what the fuck is wrong with parents? Oh my God, that's terrible to say to a child. So then we would kind of be forced to stop with that traumatic announcement of incoming death. But if we had time, we would honestly dialogue it out. We would hit a peak, we'd let all the energy out, screaming or bickering at each other, like, about all this, nothingness. And then all of a sudden, the energy would be gone and we'd be like, "Okay, okay, we're resolved. Oh, that wasn't really, why are we fighting still?" So there were times when we definitely were able to resolve and, ultimately, conflict makes us closer. I mean, not in such volume, but when we were able to resolve our fights, it was really good. Rachel: What were your plans when you were thinking about leaving home and going to college, I know you ended up going to the same place. Was that something that you had wanted to do? Izumi: Um, not necessarily. I think Sorana probably didn't say this to me too much because they wanted me to feel like I could do anything I wanted to. I got into Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, but my family just couldn't afford to send me there. The financial aid wasn't enough or anything. So I couldn't go there. And ultimately we just, we went to UW together. So, yeah. Maybe it's possible that I just don't remember them saying, "Oh, I really don't want you to go to a different school than me. Can we go to the same school?" I don't really remember too much about that time, 'cause I just remember being really bummed that I couldn't go to the school that I was so excited about going to. And, ultimately, looking back, I am really, really glad we went to the same school and kind of entered adulthood in the same context. And we ended up in similar enough circles in school through various organizing efforts that, like, I would've been some sort of Cali surfer bro. If I'd gone to Cal Poly, I would've been playing ultimate Frisbee and uh, doing keggers. I don't know, that's just a guess, maybe. ‘Cause I know one of my friends was dating a twin and that the twin that they were dating was the independent twin and the other twin lived really far away and wanted to be way closer together. And it just seems really sad to live in a separate state from your twin if you're, if you're close. I would not wanna do that. Rachel: What is the most time that you've ever spent apart or the most distance? Izumi: Oh (Laughs). I think it's actually only been like a month apart from each other ever. Or wait. I think it might have been less than a month. Oh my god. I think it’s max three weeks. I went to Morocco for a study abroad and that was, I think, the most time we've ever spent apart. That's crazy. I love it (Laughs). Rachel: Do you remember feeling any certain kind of way during that time, given it was definitely the longest you've spent apart? Izumi: Um, for me, just the whole trip was kind of bizarre 'cause I was with the business school. I was the only environmental studies at the time, it changed paths, but I was the only environmental studies kid with a bunch of business majors. So I just felt really lonely in general. I was like, “Um, guys, this is a Muslim country. Uh, I don't really wanna drink alcohol. Why are you guys so obsessed with drinking alcohol?” So I definitely would've liked it if Sorana had been there. I think we would've had way more fun, but I wasn't particularly thinking about missing my twin. I was just missing anybody. Rachel: When you have an experience that Sorana does not experience, do you share all of that? Is it like, okay, I have to fill in Sorana? Is that, like, an urge that you have? Izumi: If it's something really good, like a funny story or something dumb at work, yeah. There will definitely be times when I'm like, oh, I gotta remember to tell Sorana this. More than that, I think it happens with stuff that I see. If I see something that I know Sorana would like, I'd be like, damn, I wish I could buy that for Sorana. Or like, wow, I can't wait to show Sorana a photo of this thing that I saw that I know they'd get a kick out of. But for trips and stuff, I think it's the same as with any family member, friend of like, you go through the photo set of what you saw and what you did and you tell them about it. It's probably more interesting for Sorana to listen to it than for anyone else to listen to it. That could be just a guess maybe. Maybe they were kind of jealous and FOMO. Or I just call them while I'm away. I know anytime I've been traveling or something we'll FaceTime. A lot. We FaceTime a lot even though we live really close to each other (Laughs). Rachel: How often do you FaceTime? Izumi: Probably like three times a week. Just for, like, random things. It doesn't have to be for a long time. Just checking in and saying, "Hey, what's up? What are you up to? Not much. How's the cat? Oh, look at the cat." You know. Rachel: So I wanna touch back on the anecdote about your parents telling you to consider the fact that one of you might die as a reason to stop fighting. Was that characteristic of the way your twinship was considered in the family? Was it something to be revered or something like that? Or was that just a play to be dramatic? Izumi: Oh, that was just a play to be dramatic and get us to stop fighting. 'Cause it was stressful and I was like, hmm, that's ironic coming from you and dad. I don't really remember our parents ever saying anything too othering of the fact that we were twins. They would always tell us we're happy no matter what you two do. We don't want you two to have to feel like you need to do the same thing, be the same person. They were always really, I mean, they were just not hover helicopter parents in any way, shape, or form. So we were given pretty free reign to express ourselves how we wanted to as individuals. Rachel: Did you have individual relationships with your parents, or were most of the time you spent with them shared time between you and Sorana? Izumi: Uh, I'd say we had individual relationships. A characteristic of my kind of fucked up household was a lot of comparison of the parents, like one parent talking smack about the other. And there was a little bit of that between us as well, parents being like, “I can't believe Sorana's room is so messy.” Or like, yeah, a little bit of that kind of thing too between us with one parent or the other. Just, like, how fucked up is that? Rachel: What was your reaction typically when they would do that? Izumi: Um, it made me uncomfortable. I think it depended on if I was angry at Sorana for something. I think usually it just made me feel uncomfortable. I don't really remember how I would react or respond. I just remember not liking it at all. I mean, I think I disliked it more when it was about the other parent, but if it was about Sorana, I didn't like it either. Rachel: So I know that you said you ended up creating this melded community and sharing friends and that sort of thing in college. It sounds like when you got there you were excited to meet new people. Can you tell me about how that evolved from when you arrived to having this shared house and a shared community, it sounds like. Izumi: When I first got to UW, I really wanted to be friends with all these cool, artsy people. And then after a while, it just faded. I realized they really weren't all that. I was like, “You guys are kind of shallow, aren't you?” And I think I had gotten ghosted or just not invited to something and I was like, okay, so I'm done with that group. And, um, we had a friend, this is actually the craziest meet cute I think. I was in a really small class with my friend Noah, and we had met and hit it off and he went to his next class. And it was a huge lecture hall, like, UW classes are enormous. Hundreds of kids in a lecture hall and Sorana's in that lecture! Our friend had us in both two separate classes for his first quarter at UW. That's crazy. And so he sat down next to Sorana and Sorana's like, who the fuck is this? And Noah realized pretty immediately that it wasn't me, 'cause he thought it was me to go sit by for the first lecture. And, uh, yeah, he had no idea. And then later we all became friends. And we're all still friends. And I think that kind of started us on the same wavelength of the kind of friends we wanted to have, I think. Like both of our bullshit meters kind of turned out the same of what kind of friends or who we could find trustworthy or be comfortable around. And I think largely that it was informed by how comfortable we are around each other. You want friends that'll make you feel safe and not weird or annoying or whatever. And, I mean, Seattle seems like kind of a big city, but there's so many mutuals. So we did different organizing groups in college, but a lot of those people knew each other. And even if Sorana had made a different group of friends, they would invite me to meet the friends and then we'd all kind of end up being friends. And I think, same with my friend group to some extent. We do have different circles but it became the same as childhood a little bit, our friends are both of our friends. Rachel: Did it ever matter who had met the person first in terms of how the friendship evolved? Izumi: Maybe at first, like one of us would be closer with the person we met first. But over time it kind of, it changes and, like, I have a friend, or we have a friend who I was really close with at the beginning and now Sorana and this friend are much closer and hang out a lot more than I hang out with this friend. So it doesn't necessarily play out that way. Rachel: And tell me about your experience coming to live together and then deciding to finally separate again. Izumi: Mmm. So, if I remember correctly, it was me and someone I became friends with at the dorms. We decided, yeah, let's definitely live together. And, uh, I think I was on the fence about asking Sorana to live with us. I kind of thought, oh, I don't know if it's a good idea, but I think I remember Sorana being like, well then what the hell am I gonna do? Like, why can't I be in the house with you guys? And I think that ultimately was the right choice for sure. Yeah. We have a friend who is definitely the glue for our household, who kept us on track. I don't think they ever told us, “Don't fight you guys,” but they're such a gentle friend and such a good friend that we didn't wanna fight around them. I think that's kind of the case with living together. We learned, oh, we don't wanna fight around people we like, that's embarrassing. That's not nice or courteous to your roommates. And so we lived together in one house for a year. Then the same house group moved and we lived together there for two years. And then after that, it was 2020 and we all moved to South Seattle which was way far away from where we'd ever lived before, like half an hour away. And it was really isolating. And we had some immunocompromised roommates and it was during lockdown, so our lockdown actually went a lot longer than most other people's. And we were so isolated in South Seattle, we didn't really know anyone. There wasn't really anything to do for us at the time. I remember sneaking away and feeling really bad for going on a run with my one friend who lived nearby. Yeah, it was not a good time and at a certain point – oh, and I couldn't see my partner in any capacity that wasn't just social distance for, like, nine months because of the way we were living. And I think Sorana was the one to honestly enforce a lot of it more than the people who were immunocompromised in our household. So at a certain point I was like, you know what? I would like to live differently. I don't wanna be trapped in this house anymore. I need a job 'cause I've graduated with college now. And I would like to see my partner and not have to be six feet away from him. So that would be cool. And it was really stressful to get to that point and tell Sorana that. It was probably our biggest conflict ever 'cause they felt like I was abandoning them. A lot of their abandonment stuff got kicked up. And I remember when I told them, they gave me the silent treatment for like three whole days. Yeah. It was really awkward. It was really awkward. But I also, I tried my best to give them a lot of grace. I was like, you know what, it's a bad time. We're in a really bad time right now. I remember being like, I could be mad and upset back, but what would that do? Like, I'm just gonna wait for them to come around. And that's what worked out the best. They gave me a letter of how they were feeling and we talked it out and once I moved out they decided that they too wanted to move out. And so it all worked out. Yeah. Sometimes doing the hard thing – because I made a big change, they realized that they too could make a similar big change and chase after what they want in their happiness. Rachel: Have there been other times when things like that have happened, or one of you has made a big change and it's inspired in the other the courage or idea or initiative to do something like that? Izumi: I think so. Um, it doesn't feel like a big change as much as a settling into something, but Sorana came out as non-binary a little bit before I did, like a year or so before. And when they came out it got me thinking a lot more about gender and identity. And as we started hanging out with more gays and theys, I was able to just be surrounded by a world where I could explore that. And that is because of Sorana. I remember, um, Sorana doing this art show for the queer center at UW, and I met all of their friends, all the cool queers, and they were like, oh my God. Gay twins. Gay twins. And I was like, I don't know. I don't, I don't know. Are we gay twins? Are we gay twins? But that, you know, that just got me thinking. I was like, yes, that seems right. Rachel: Did you and Sorana talk about it or was it just like you're taking it in, you're thinking about it, and then conclusions are settling in on your own? Izumi: Yeah, I think it was a lot of conclusions on our own. I don't think the two of us talked too much about it in the initial, just 'cause we were able to go to other people and chat about it. And we have different gender expressions, like, I don't necessarily identify as trans, but I know Sorana is definitely trans-masc. So even within that there's differences. Rachel: Have those differences in expression changed how you perceive your twinship or, I guess, how other people perceive your twinship, too? Izumi: I don't know about how other people see it, but I feel like it makes us more of the troublesome twosome. I feel like when we roll up together, we're like, I have Sorana come over to my work a lot of the time at this fancy ass guitar store, and I just feel like, hahahahaha. Infiltration, infiltration. Once Sorana comes in and like, they'll sit at the front desk with me and I'll be like, what is the boss gonna do? What is he gonna do? Huh? I don't know, I feel like more of a dynamic duo now than ever before. Rachel: Can you tell me a little bit more about that feeling, that infiltration? What is it that you're feeling when Sorana is there and there's two of you? Izumi: I just feel like we're like little, little creatures. I don't know, I feel like we're little characters in our book. Maybe that's a little “main character energy” of us. But I feel like that when they walk into my work especially, I'm like, “Oh, that's what's up. Everybody step back and watch. It's us.” Just cause we're funny. Like, Sorana's such a goober. Before they secured themself and their identity, I don't think they were having as much fun in their life and now they're having a lot more fun. So I can have more fun too. Rachel: How does your behavior change when you're around each other? Izumi: I feel more relaxed for sure. It depends on the situation. If Sorana comes to my work, I feel way chilled out. Like the other day I had Sorana come with me to this rehearsal I had for a performance and I felt better about going to the event because I knew Sorana would be tagging along and hanging out. And honestly, I didn't even ask if they could come, 'cause what, is someone gonna be like, "Don't bring your twin”? That would be rude! Yeah. Rachel: Do you think twins should always be allowed? Izumi: Who's gonna get mad if you bring your twin? I just feel like it'd be rude (Laughs). That's how I feel. Like, what you don't think more the merrier? That's a problem. Because it just feels like, well, obviously my twin's gonna have the 4-1-1 of what's going on, and they'll be appropriate. Don't worry. They're the most vetted anyone could ever be. Rachel: So I know that you're working in this fancy-ass guitar shop and it sounds like you're doing that music kind of thing now. Is that what you're exploring in your life path right now? Izumi: Yeah. Rachel: So how has your relationship evolved as you've started to take on these different identities around work and art post-college? Izumi: Hmm, I wanna say just having different jobs in different sectors just gives us more fun chatting about our workplaces 'cause I don't know what Sorana does at their museum all day. I have no idea what they do. I have no clue. Big question mark as to what their day looks like when they're at work. I have no clue, but I know of the people who are there, which is what we end up talking about is, like, people at our work. Um, yeah, I think it's just given us more, more to talk about, especially my work because random customers come in, I'll be like, “Dude, let me tell you about this terrible customer.” Or, they'll tell me about the panel history talk that happened at their work. And a lot of those are cool. They're just a nerd! Rachel: Do you make fun of each other? Izumi: Yes. I would say I'm a little more sensitive than they are. they make fun of me a little more and I'm like, “Ow, stop. I'm just one guy.” Um, yeah, no, we dig on each other and if we're both in a great mood, it's really fun. Neither of us are like this super hard roaster kind of person. We're the, "Oh, you silly nilly!" kind of dig. Yeah. Sometimes Sorana will make fun of me when I'm really hungry or tired. They'll be like, "Stop making your Tina noises," from Bob's Burgers. I'm like, uhhh, I call it "Sad Baby Robot Hours," and I don't like being made fun of while that's happening, but I do enjoy it after. Rachel: You said something like when you were living together and fighting a lot and you would see the way other people reacted. Can you tell me how, from your understanding, the people around you have felt about seeing twins fight? What does that mean to people? Izumi: I think people are, like, deeply uncomfortable. They're like, oh my God, because I think people who have siblings fight in a similar way to how twins fight, but I don't know if siblings can somehow reign it in more appropriately, like only fighting at home or whatever. But we just couldn't, we just couldn't hold it in. And I guess with roommates, like, yeah, technically that is at home. I do remember a couple times where if we fought at the house, one of our roommates would be like, “Damn, Sorana was like, really mean to you just now.” And I'd be like, “Oh really? I had no idea.” They'd be like, “What the fuck? That was awful.” Or I'm sure alternatively someone had said that to Sorana about what I had said or something. And we'd be like, oh, I had no idea. I remember being upset, but I didn't know that was that particularly fucked up. And sometimes people would be just so deep in recoil at how sharp our bickering was that they'd have to walk away. I remember in high school especially the early morning thing is really just not a recipe for success on the sibling front. I'm sure most sibling fights started in the mornings, but I remember us getting in a really bad one on the way to school to the point where we were throwing each other's bags out of the car in the parking lot at school. And I think maybe one person came up to us and was like, “Hey, are you guys okay?” But everyone else kinda looked and walked towards the door. They did not wanna get involved. It's really embarrassing but so funny now that I look back on it. ‘Cause it was like, across the lot. Rachel: You mentioned that the car is generally not a safe space. Izumi: Very much not. Rachel: Why do you think that is? What is it about driving? Izumi: Being trapped for sure, just in the, your little, two ton can. I think a lot of it is from other childhoods, trauma stuff, but yeah, the car is not a great place. I think that's probably true for a lot of people. I mean, even when we're not together, the car is a hard place for me. I don't like to talk that much in the car so I'm not the most fun road trip buddy. Yeah, but it's definitely aggravated if we're together and in a stressful environment in the car, you know, “Oh, you missed the turn,” or what have you. Rachel: So you've probably gotten the question your whole life, “Do you like being a twin?” And it's like, well, it's all I know. That kind of thing. But do you ever think about or question what your experience would be like if you were not a twin? Is that something that you roll over in your mind at all? Izumi: I do, but it's so dark that I try not to go there. It's, yeah, it would be terribly lonely. I've thought about that before like, wow, if you're a twin, you will never know what it's like to be lonely. I mean, well, I can't generalize like that, but I do not know what it is like to be lonely. Rachel: And is it because if you're lonely or you feel the loneliness coming, you can call Sorana? Or is it more that even when you're alone, you know that you have this other person with you? Izumi: I'd say both. Like, if I'm just bored at home on a Monday twiddling my thumbs, I can say, “Hey, what's up? You wanna hang out?” But more than that in the existential, this mortal coil, woe is me times, I can know that I really actually am never without a person who understands me or sees my intrinsic value or knows my nature, regardless of what front I'm trying to put on or have to put on for the outside world. Rachel: When you were thinking about this conversation, was there anything else that came up for you when you cast your mind back in terms of, patterns, memories, reflections that felt like you wanted to bring up here? Izumi: Let me look in my little book here. I think with friend stuff, especially because Sorana kept me on the straight and narrow earlier on in our lives, there was a time when I think Sorana had a riskier friend group. I saw these people and I would, I immediately get the sense of like, I don't know if this person has your best interests in mind, because Sorana had already sifted my bullshit meter of like, oh, this is a situation that I don't think is good, and they'd be very clear about that. When I felt angry with Sorana I would say you're just being kind of hover-y, or overprotective, or feel too much of a sense of responsibility. And I didn't really necessarily feel that way. I would tell Sorana, maybe, that I didn't like this person that much or just decline to hang out if Sorana was gonna go hang out with these people. Especially, like, early in college, everyone's kind of figuring out their friendship needs and styles and what they like to do with people. But I think because Sorana had already kind of checked me before I wrecked me, I had a pretty good sense of who had ulterior motives. I don't know if that's entirely because of Sorana's snitching as a child, but I'd say it helps. I think it's interesting that Sorana was able to, for lack of a better word, protect me in those situations, but couldn't do the same thing for their own friendships and relationships later. Maybe not couldn't, but just didn't. Rachel: So having that third party seems really necessary to get that kind of perspective. Izumi: Oh, yeah. Rachel: I'm wondering, since it was just your birthday and I can see the banner behind you with both your names, have you ever had separate birthday parties? Izumi: No. No. There was a time when Sorana had some resentments against my boyfriend. I think maybe Sorana – it didn't really matter who my partner was. I think Sorana just had some jealousy to work through around that. There was a time when I couldn't invite him to our birthday, so I did a little birthday thing with him and then I went to go hang out with a bunch of Sorana's friends who were not exactly my friends at that time. And that was the weirdest birthday we had. Oh no, I take that back. There was a time when we kind of had separate birthdays because I broke my wrist on my birthday. Yeah. I crashed my bike in Seattle and they came to pick me up and I was, like, bleeding all down my face and stuff. So they took me to the hospital on our birthday. Rachel: Oh no. That's one to remember. Izumi: Yeah. It was bad. But Sorana was the first person I called. Rachel: How have things evolved with you having a partner and now you're living apart from Sorana? What's that relationship like? Did they have a relationship with your partner? Izumi: Yeah. They get along perfectly fine now. Yeah, it's always just really chill. Sometimes I'll ask if Sorana can come over just out of courtesy, you know, like, I don't wanna be monopolizing the household, I just wanna be nice. But sometimes I don't because I also feel like it's my twin. I shouldn't have to ask. Yeah. But they have a good relationship now. I think when we all three hang out together, it's not really ever awkward, 'cause he's also really quiet. So it's a very gentle, gentle presence. He knows he's gonna hang back and we're gonna do our thing together. But then he'll always be listening and like, we all rode in Sorana's car the other day and afterwards Tyler asked, “oh, do you think it would be all right if I got Sorana windshield wipers for their birthday?” And I was like, that's so nice. That's so sweet and courteous. You're thinking about my twin too. Rachel: And that gives you warm feelings inside? Izumi: Yeah, very much. Rachel: All right. As a final question – I ask this of everyone – when do you feel most like yourself? Izumi: Um, I think when I'm writing a song. Yeah, that's when I feel most like me. And I wonder if it's the same for Sorana when they're drawing. I'm gonna ask them when we're done. ‘Cause you know what they said! Rachel: (Laughs) Well, you'll hear it at some point, but you should ask them. I'm curious what they tell you. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Izumi: Oh, just that I'm really excited to hear what other other twins have to say, too. I'm really curious. Rachel: Is there anything specifically you're curious about learning? Izumi: Twins who ended up living far away from each other. What's that like?&nbsp; <img width="1125" height="2436" width_o="1125" height_o="2436" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e2e16ef1273fb35be10f59daa4ad8a1ce8257defec7f7bd4637318b2fc05d296/image_123986672.JPG" data-mid="227228101" border="0" data-scale="63" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e2e16ef1273fb35be10f59daa4ad8a1ce8257defec7f7bd4637318b2fc05d296/image_123986672.JPG" /> Previous https://likeness.ing/Elizabeth-S Tue, 20 Dec 2022 22:24:24 +0000 Likeness https://likeness.ing/Elizabeth-S Elizabeth S. Identical twin, 20s, from the USA. Themes: &nbsp; Listen to the extended clip. Listen to the extended clip. Listen to the extended clip. Listen to the extended clip. <img width="892" height="592" width_o="892" height_o="592" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/63e15c154218e18cd1e7e403a367b8c69ffcf1a7fd8df63dad0f3ac22c430516/Elizabeth-Sun-Photo.jpg" data-mid="162444520" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/892/i/63e15c154218e18cd1e7e403a367b8c69ffcf1a7fd8df63dad0f3ac22c430516/Elizabeth-Sun-Photo.jpg" /> Previous&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Next