The Twins

My sister and I share a birthday: August 25, 1985. We are fraternal twins; I possess dark hair and brown eyes while Sarah has dirty-blonde tresses paired with blue eyes. Though our date of birth is one of the few things that we have in common, we have settled into a comfortable sisterly relationship characterized by deep love. But this strong bond that now exists between us took almost two decades to forge and the path that led here was wrought with vicious sibling rivalry and the dreaded “twin” labels that most of our kind has to suffer through.
Growing up she and I shared a mutual love of Barbie, My Little Pony, and bike riding. We also shared a room until we were thirteen which was the probable culprit of much of the arguing that went on. As we matured our interests shifted. In elementary school our differences became a lot more obvious. Though we were both active athletes, Sarah was a much more talented sportsman and therefore became known as the “sporty” twin. I was much more active at school and had always been a top student so I was dubbed the “smart” twin. There was a lot of competition between the two of us in those areas and much of the rivalry that existed at this time in our lives was a direct result of this. Sarah and I were always trying to out-shine the other in our chosen fields and would not hesitate to rub in any victory we may have achieved. Even our contrasting appearances wore at odds with one another. Sarah began to dye her hair a paler shade of blonde, while I tinted my strands a darker hue.
Another key difference at this stage in our lives was our individual choice of friends. Sarah preferred the company of the more popular, if not less kind, girls at school, while I stuck with a closer-knit, less socially savvy bunch. My friends and I hated her crowd and we definitely bad-mouthed them behind their backs. And I am certain Sarah and her cronies did not have many pleasant words to say about us.
Sarah and I were getting more and more distant as middle school approached. Our differences at school caused extreme amounts of fighting on the home front. But before we could kill each other with our hair pulling, teeth gnashing brawls something happened that completely altered the sister-hating path we were barreling down at full speed: our parents got divorced and Sarah chose to reside with our father, while I stayed with our mother. And we attended separate high schools. This separation alleviated all of the contention between us because we were able to begin the lifelong process of discovering who we were as individuals. The “twin” labels no longer applied as we were free to become whatever we desired without having to out-do one another or fit into our predetermined twin molds. The bitter arguing stopped and we struck up a friendship.
Today my sister is the most important person in my life. I love her more than I ever thought possible and when I think back to the rocky road that led us here, I can only laugh at how silly and petty we both were then. We still have our moments, but it is a friendly sort of rivalry.