I hate the question, “What's it like being a twin?”

My whole life I have gotten that question, and it gets old quickly. When I was younger and was asked the question I gave a pre-rehearsed answer of “It's like having a built-in best friend” even though best friends did not fight as much as we did. As I grew up I realized just how dumb the question really was. I do not know what it's like to be a twin from an outsider's perspective because I have been a twin my whole life, and before you say anything about one of us technically being older, I'll let you know that we were born at the exact same time. “How is that possible?” You say well, the explanation I have had to give again and again is that my mom had a C-section, and the doctors grabbed an arm and a leg, thinking it was one baby, but it was both of us.

We have been a spectacle to the people around us our whole lives. Random strangers will come up to ask us if we are twins and when we say yes they act like that is the craziest thing they have ever heard. What's worse is some people will just stare at us as we walk by them and I have to question if something is wrong with my face or hair or something, or if they are just amazed that we look the same. Last summer my sister and I both worked at a YMCA pool and one day our boss called us out to the pool deck to show us off to the customers. This was followed by a sea of questions including the dreaded “What's it like being a twin?”. By this point in our lives me and my sister have learned to just point out the obvious and ask them “what's it like not being a twin” to help them realize the flaws in the question at hand.

What's worse than being made a spectacle is when people believe that we are the same person just because we are identical. I have had multiple people say to my face that they would hate to have a twin because they could not “deal with another version of themselves”. My sister and I are different people. We may look alike and sometimes even sound alike but we have different passions, interests, and experiences that have made us into the unique individuals that we are today. People love to lump us together and it makes me feel like I will never be seen as my own person.

I could go on and on about this but I will wrap it up by saying that I am not trying to say I wish I was not a twin, I am just trying to point out that we should not be made out to be some sort of spectacle and that people should not see us as one but as our own separate people.