After almost two years apart, I feel like I finally have enough authority to speak on this subject. I might have needed more time than most twins, or maybe not. Maybe two years is the allotted amount of time to truly realize what it means to be away from your twin. I guess I figured that absence after eighteen years of togetherness (eighteen years of the same friends, same hometown, same jobs) would take a while to understand. That part at least, I was right about.
You see, it isn't easy to learn to fall asleep for the first time without the presence of someone who has been there for 6,570 nights. Ok, so I may be a few nights off, because I'm no genius when it comes to math, and there was that night she was super sick and I slept at my aunt's house so I wouldn't get sick too.
But when you go to a different college than your twin, it starts before you even leave. Everyone you've ever known will ask you why you decided to split up—"Won't you miss each other?" "Won't it be weird being known as something other than the twins?" Every time the answers to those questions are “yes," and that's only the beginning.
When you actually do arrive at your respective campuses, it really is the oddest thing in the world not to be one part of a whole. It's a learning curve eighteen years in the making. It's the first big life event without your partner in crime. It's your parents dividing move-in day. It's texts sent from state lines away. It's saying “see you soon" for the first time, and having soon mean a few months.
For the first time in my life I didn't have people asking me, “Where's Kate?" whenever I showed up alone. I was one single person to everyone I met. When I felt awkward in social situations, I didn't have her to lean back on. I had to learn how to speak of her without assuming everyone knew her. It was the first chance I got to look at her through the eyes of a stranger.
Without your twin, you learn all the things you admire in them are usually shortcomings in yourself. Their perfectionism. The way they take meticulous care in every decision they make. Their rationality, their "Grey's Anatomy" obsession, their strength and belief in all that is good, and their need to belt out any song at any moment without caring about who's around to witness it.
Having a twin, you always kind of know you're a complete person by yourself, that you're able to stand on your own, but the thing about being a twin is, you never really want to.
That's what happens when you go to different colleges. You learn you can stand on your own, you just wonder why you'd ever even want to.
