Twins

Bette Midler once said, “Cherish forever what makes you unique, because you’re really a yawn if it goes." Eleanor Roosevelt too commented on the value of individuality when she said, “Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one." Individuality has been one aspect of human life that is taught from the earliest stages of comprehension: you are unique, you are special, and there is no one else like you. But it’s a little different with twins!

My fraternal twin sister and I are 19 years old.

Our 19th birthday, which was yesterday, was the first birthday in our lives that we celebrated apart. It was a milestone that marked the beginningn of the rest of our lives, our lives on separate paths that now only occasionally intertwine. She chose to go to school in Texas while I decided to go here. Because of Hurricane Katrina, my whole college experience so far has been a unique one, and very different from hers.

We didn’t want to go to the same college because we wanted our own separate identities, and our own separate experiences. My father is a fraternal twin as well, and as the frustration of always being one of the twins really began to hit us, he told us to get used to it. At the age of 50 people still remembered him and his twin brother the same way. Growing up as a twin made it difficult enough to assert our independence from each other, and through our teen years, constant comparison made this feat almost Herculean.

We are much better friends now than we ever were, because instead of growing up together, the societal misconceptions about twins made us almost into competitors in every respect. After coming to Tulane, it was my goal to establish my own identity, separate from hers. I am nowinvolved in multicultural organizations, pledging for a sorority, president of my dorm, and writing (sporadically, I’ll admit!) for the Hullabaloo.Since coming here, I’ve found so many opportunities to succeed and excel! I didn’t ever think I wanted to go to a smaller university, and almost attended a large state school like she did, but Tulane has made its way into my heart and New Orleans has made its way into my soul.

Going back to Eleanor Roosevelt’s prolific words, we see that we each have an obligation to be unique. In the world of twins, uniqueness doesn’t come with the territory. But with this birthday and each coming year from now on, our twinship is no longer what defines us. It is part of who we are, but certainly not all we are. We are individuals.

This is Anisha (L) and me at a restaurant in Moscow last spring.