I have always been moderately jealousy (tempered with sympathy) of my twin-having peers. A built-in friend who understands your life experience at a bodily level. An assurance that you will never have to go through life stages alone. I recall the unparalleled devotion and warm feelings that arise when I think of my sister, and I think: what a thrill it would be if our age difference disappeared—my role as older and hers as younger removed from the equation. Not that I wish I was younger, nor do I dislike being a mentor to her. And by the way, the roles aren't fixed; I learn from her all the time—she always seems to goes through what I just did with more grace and wisdom than I ever had. But it would be nice to have a partner in paving the way. Of course, there is the flip-side of twindom: the comparisons, the loss of individuality, the difficulties of disparate personalities. These more gnarly parts, which are further complicated by whether the twins are fraternal or identical, are written about with radical honesty by Jean Garnett's piece for The Yale Review, "There I Almost Am."
Garnett focuses largely on the comparison component of her identical twindom. With bodies so similar, small differences magnify. Further, she and her sister choose the same career-paths, breeding a lifetime of competition. Growing a family, Garnett notes, is the only thing that a twin can claim as her own—but even that still holds the possibility of comparisons.
Garnett does not hold back her feelings: "You want your identical twin to be beautiful, to confirm that you are beautiful, but you also want her to be ugly, to confirm that she is uglier than you."
She brings in psychoanalytical theories of desire and envy about mother-child relationships. For her, she says, it is never just the mother and the child: a twin is always part of a triangulation. "We are not only dependent on our mother to nourish, but on each other to share rather than steal. Each of us withholds from the other—each of us constitutes, for the other—the thing that would end all discomfort by conferring wholeness."
This idea of 'conferring wholeness' fascinates me. Each twin needs something only the other has. What an impossibly frustrating, though simultaneously beautiful set-up: one twin can never be whole on their own. An interdependence forms. I glorify it because I imagine this fosters some magical bond only they experience. But from Garnett's description, perhaps it is not so lovely. If envy wins out, the fantasy is ruined.
But is this need for wholeness only felt by twins, or can singlets experience it too? I wonder: in the absence of a twin, is there still some sort of psychoanalytical identical—a matching piece that the child seeks to confer wholeness? Does a certain triangulation always occur?
I think about this specifically in relation to mother-daughter dynamics. A mother—even if she might deny this—imagines a future for her daughter. She molds this consciously and subconsciously, from a complicated mix of her own experience (real or unlived), as well as her values and the set of norms she uses to operate in the world. The potency of this premeditated future might vary, but regardless, it influences how the child makes and interprets their decisions. It is very hard to escape either succumbing to or reacting against some part of a mother's wishes. Could a child's relationship to that passed-down expectation create the other half—the perfect twin—which the child works to both resist and move towards?
If the mother's fantasy child is the identical twin, we might all experience some envy like that described by Garnett. That perfect version etches its way into your mind: one works to become her or fails trying.
The next time you disappoint your mother, I suggest thinking: good thing I've got a twin.
References:
Jean Garnett, "There I Almost Am," The Yale Review, https://yalereview.org/article/there-i-almost-am.
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