There at my Earliest Memory

At around two years old, maybe younger, at an age where I understood that I was small with brown, curly hair, I have a memory of going down the stairs. As I made my way I turned around and I saw myself, a small person with brown curls, toddling down the stairs two steps behind. Obviously, I wasn’t me, it was C. Old enough to have seen myself in a mirror, but also aware that this other person was usually there too, I can’t have fully understood the boundary between us, where she and I became distinct. Inherently I must have known an overlap was there.

Twins are asked the same questions again and again. My least favourite (ones that will make me judge and resent you) are: how can I tell the difference between you? Are you guys telepathic? D’you know you sound really similar? No, really, what’s the difference? Being unique sometimes has felt unachievable, and looking, sounding, and sometimes acting in a similar way to another person has dented my ego over the years. On occasion I’ve needed to give myself a stern talking to and remember that it doesn’t matter, because all in all I’m very happy that I have a twin sister.

For anyone reading this who isn’t a girl and doesn’t have an identical twin, let me explain what it’s like: I have a best friend who I’ve been on holiday with a thousand times, we hysterically laugh every time we see each other, we can flip from giggling to talking about politics to talking childhood traumas and end up back in stitches. Come to think of it, we do essentially speak our own private language, because we’re expert lip readers, well practiced after a childhood delivering secrets to one another. 

We grew up side by side. I don’t need to explain things to C because she knows what makes me angry and what makes me smirk. And more crucially, she also knows the genesis of my feelings. She was there when those things first made me mad. It can be a joy to be understood. I know it’s something that happens rarely and people can go their whole lives without being truly known. I can say with perfect certainty that as long as I’ve been alive there has been a minimum of one person who’s understood me, and that’s because of C. But, it is also terrifying to be understood. For your sighs to be expected, your rough opinions braced for, the cruder sides of yourself anticipated once your triggers have been pulled.

I am known, but I am undivided. Often spoken to as a unit till the past few years, remarkable as an act of science, but un-unique because I am shared. I have resented, never C, but how I think, and now expect, that other people see me. At a young age I learnt to correct adults who confused me with my sister. At times I was aware that others were embarrassed by my bluntness but I wasn’t sorry then, and I struggle to feel sorry now. In my mid twenties on a rare occasion when I find myself with extended family or my parents’ friends, when I’m asked which one am I again by a woman who has known me all my life, or my mum’s friend squeezes me and avoids having to give me a name, I feel the old fire in me grow.

Being a twin has made me soft with C, she who has seen all of me, but hardened with those outside my twinship, anyone who gawks at me will be finely minced by my words and weighted stare. A remedy for this dynamic is that, thankfully, C doesn’t mind the drawbacks of being a twin. She doesn’t battle for her individuality or feel the need to shut anyone up. 

Now we are firmly adults, I can see how different we are. We still whisper and giggle together, but less often of course. Our venn diagram of friends is less mutual, the pressure points that mark and guide our decisions are not the same, I don’t know if we’ll ever live together again. None of these things are bad, but I have noticed them.

It’s hard to write about the ways a person who has always been there has formed you, because to live my life, is to live it with C. In fact, it might be easier to identify what she hasn’t influenced, but when I make new friends, start dating someone, begin a new job, her reactions only refine my own emotions to these new experiences. In sharing our new lives, it becomes yet another way to feel close. Something we love to share with each other is songs. She likes slightly more melancholic music than me, but for the most part if I like it, she’ll probably like it too. This piece feels like an ode to C more than anything else and I want to sign off with a list of songs that we love / make me think of C / has homie for life vibes and you, reader, might enjoy them too. Please partake in the joys of C and I’s best friendship. I couldn’t do life without you C. I love you. 

 

Best Friend – Laufey

Do You Believe in Magic? – The Lovin’ Spoonful

La Vita Nuova – Christine and the Queen, Caroline Polachek

Everybody Needs a Best Friend – Norah Jones

Meadowlark – Liz Callaway

Houdini – Dua Lipa

Whatever We Feel – Sammy Rae & The Friends

Little of Your Love – HAIM

Catch Me In The Air – Rina Sawayama

Roll it in Home – John Mayer