I was going to write this column about how I have three papers due next Friday. It was going to be about how I'm foregoing the night life for the next week-and-a-half and buckling down and writing eloquent A-plus papers. It was going to be about how smart I can be. It was going to be about how well-balanced I decided I wanted to be 16 hours ago. It was going to be great, believe me.
And then I checked my phone. I had two missed calls and a text from my twin sister - "where r u." My mother had texted me as well asking where I was and why I hadn't contacted my sister. I sighed and pushed the green dial button next to Sissy in my contacts. I told her I was fine and I had been in a meeting she didn't know about. She told me she thought I was dead and to be safe on my walk home. I hung up and saw yet another text from my mother: "she was sobbing." I no longer want to write about papers that won't matter in a few years. I want to write about my sobbing sister.
I have written a number of love letters to my sister. They're usually penned after a big fight, when I want her to know that I'm sorry and I don't even remember why I scratched a two-inch bloody gash into her thigh. She has written some to me as well. There were a lot in high school when she had to repeatedly convince me that I was more important to her than her boyfriend. I've had an essay published in Twins Magazine. It talks about why I love being a twin.
So you'd think I'd have run out of things to say by now. To her. To the world. My good friends have certainly run out of patience with the twin question. "No, they're cousins," they growl, pulling us away from the quizzical stares of onlookers. You'd think I'd have exhausted my repertoire of twinisms and DNA jokes. But I haven't. I couldn't possibly. How could my love for someone wane when she sends out an Amber Alert if I don't respond to her texts?
Do you want to hear funny childhood stories about how my sister and I never wore clothes and rolled around in the mud in our driveway and rode our old golden retriever in the house and had awful lisps and spoke quickly and quietly only to one another? Or do you want to know how I operate now, today, talking to my anxious sister on the phone? I could tell stories all day but what I think people need to know, what I need to know, is how this coexistence thing works.
Analyzing my relationship with my sister is probably impossible. It's a common sociological and literary truism that people simply can't understand or write about the culture in which they're immersed. Yes, I am part of a culture - the twin culture. Proud to be from the same zygote - see, the lines have yet to be exhausted. So how can I tell someone else how and why my sister is so important to me?
An anecdote! Yesterday she - also known as MSH, Mary Scott, Scottie, Thing No. 2, and of course Sissy - told me to listen to a B.o.B song called "Lovelier than You." "I want a dude to sing that to me," she said while typing on her laptop. Each tap seemed to be followed by my thoughts: "But. Why. But. Why. But. Why." My sister is confident enough and fun enough and a lot of other complimentary adjectives - that I don't want her to want a guy to sing to her. I want her to be able to sing to herself.
I want this for no one else. For no one else am I so selfless to say: "You don't need a dude! You're great by yourself! Now let's go sing that Beyonc
Read More
What your contraception of choice says about you
By CD Life staff | 1 hours agoThere is no time like the present to consider the many birth control options available to us, each with their own unique personality.
It’s okay not to be okay
By Mai Hukuoka | January 8, 2025Whether talking to a friend, a loved one or a professional, it is so necessary, and human, to need more than you can provide for yourself.
Taking a break at Tangerines Kitchen
By Charley Thomas | January 6, 2025What the restaurant somewhat lacks in ambiance, it compensates for in tasty dishes and prompt service.
