Two of a kind? Born as a twin, living as an individual

One September day of my senior year in high school, my twin sister and I were riding the Metro when a stranger did a double take and walked over to where we were seated. Right on cue, he began rattling through the usual list of questions, and some new ones.
“Are you twins?” he asked, “Are you identical? Who’s older? By how much? What are your names? If one of you breaks your arm can the other one feel it? Do you ever play tricks on people?”
He treated us as a spectacle, as if we were something people had read about but never seen in real life. Generally these questions don’t bother my twin sister and me—but this particular stranger took his questioning a little too far.
When we asked where we attended school, and we replied that we both wanted to go to Georgetown, the man scoffed at us in utter disgust.
“Are you really going to the same school?” he asked. “Don’t you want to be your own person?”
My sister and I muttered back an excuse, saying that it would be hard to be apart for so long. He seemed to accept our weak response. But I couldn’t get the sting of his question out of my mind. Would going to the same school really prevent us from growing as individuals?
As best friends who had never spent more than a day apart from one another, my sister and I always knew we wanted to go to the same college. This came as no surprise to anyone who knew us in high school, since most knew us as “the Garitys,” or even worse, “the twins.”
When I began to write my first college application essay, I noticed that every story I recalled started with a “we” instead of an “I.” Of course our friends and family thought we had very different personalities, but no one would be able to tell that on paper. Anxious about having a joint identity, we began picking ourselves apart, dividing our attributes between the two of us so we could come across as different people. I became the English/history “creative” twin and my sister became the math/science “logical” twin. At the time, we were pleased with ourselves—we had succeeded in defining our separate identities by determining who was better at what. We were sure we had discovered a foolproof way of asserting ourselves as individuals. But soon, we realized we could not have been more wrong.
After we had established these distinct identities, our friends started exclusively asking me to edit their papers because I was the “English” twin. When drama occurred among our friends, everyone would flock to my sister, praising her for her rational way of solving their problems. I became the “animated” one because I told stories well, while my sister began to hold back in conversation. I found myself doing poorly in math, thinking it wasn’t “my thing.” In my efforts to prove myself as an individual I had become half a person, identifying myself as whatever my sister was not.
It wasn’t until we both successfully arrived at Georgetown that I realized how much I had limited my identity. For the first time there were people in my life who didn’t know I was a twin. I could actually begin a conversation without having to answer, “Which one are you?” or “What are you guys doing tonight?” I could be creative and give advice here; I could even do well in math. I didn’t have to force my personality on people. They could characterize me without using my sister as a reference point. We didn’t have to try to be different, and it was liberating.
Without the pressure to differentiate ourselves, my sister and I found that we still gravitated toward similar activities and social circles. But we didn’t feel the need to justify being together—we had chosen our interests on our own.  On a given day I can go to class as “Caroline” and then to dance practice as “one of the Garitys.” Both of my identities have expanded rather than limited my concept of myself. We have been able to avoid constant comparison while still growing up together and sharing each other’s experiences.
I realized that my identity is made up of all my interests and personality traits, regardless of whether my sister shares them with me. Now, when strangers ask us pointedly why we chose the same school, I can confidently answer that we wanted to find ourselves, both as “the twins” and as Caroline and Kimberly.