The Complexities Of Being A Twin

What is it like to be a twin?

When, shortly before dying, Elspeth is asked this in the book Her Fearful Symmetry, she responds, “All I can say is, you haven’t got a twin, so you don’t know how it is.”

As an identical twin myself, I am often asked this same question. And Elspeth’s answer exactly captures my sentiments. If you’re not a twin, how can you possibly know what it is to be one? Being a twin is like being me. What is it like to not be a twin?

I wonder what people mean when they inevitably tell me that I’m so lucky — that they wish they had a twin, too. Do they wish they had a best friend? A partner in crime? Somebody to share their secrets with? To keep them safe? To hold their hand?

A twin can be those things, but they’re also so much more (and sometimes less. And sometimes something else entirely).

And yet, these nuances are often ignored in favor of broad characterizations. We are secretive. We share clothes. We share secrets. We are too close. We are either exactly the same or totally opposite — nothing in between or around.

Most of all, we are strange.

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The fictional twins of my childhood were not characters whose lives resonated with me, usually due to the fact that they grew up conventionally…