Twin Love

I’ve always known I’m a twin. Even before it was explained to me. Even before I can remember my first memory. Even before I can remember existing, I’ve always known that my other half existed along with me. Every moment of my young life, witness to another. Witnessed by another. My Rhea! 

I say my Rhea because that’s how I see it. That nature made her for me and that I was created to accompany her into this life. She is my first love. Our lives are so deeply rooted in each other. So connected. So cellular that sometimes it feels a little magical.

We’re fraternal twins. We don’t look like each other. Just like sisters. We were encouraged by our parents to be our own people. They never dressed us the same or expected us to like the same things. So we’ve grown up to live rather different lives, and have very different likes. Even so, the transition into adulthood where we went from being a twin unit to separate individual lives has been perhaps more challenging for me than any other experience.   

When you’ve been together since the time of inception, how do you explain to yourself what being apart is going to feel like? When you’ve never really been alone how do you then deal with being lonely? When you’ve always had a friend, how do you make new ones? 

Until the age of 18, being alone meant being with Rhea for me. These specific yet routine human experiences that involved just being a single entity, felt so alien to me when I was younger. Because I had always had another person with me. To help me with my fears. There were always two people to solve problems.  

I value this relationship more than any other. It taught me how to be a friend. It taught me love. It has defined the kind of life I desire. The kind of friendships and relationships I desire. I was given a built-in best friend for life. It made me learn how to be a friend to someone. Most importantly it made me not look outside for validation. I learnt to value myself over everything else. In some weird way, because Rhea was most important to me, I became most important to me.

My twin is my conscience. My inner voice. My self-awareness.  I have no ego with her. Our life is a shared one. As are our fears and joys. To have someone completely see you from the very start of time. How do you explain that kind of awareness if not as self?  

Sometimes I imagine us before we were born. Evolving into little humans. How crazy is it that I have felt her warmth for as long as I have existed. That I have heard her heartbeat since the very first time it ever did beat. That we’ve held on to each other before we knew all that was unknown. 

I’ve always been scared of the dark - totally petrified and Rhea has lived in it quite lightly. Always accepting the unseen and more welcoming to the unknown. Yet, she has never judged my fears. She understood them without me having to ever explain it to her. As little three year olds, I remember she’d wake up in the middle of the night if I needed to go to the bathroom, Or if I  woke up from a nightmare, she would hold my hand and hug me. Thirty years on, she still guides me through dark waters while diving, staying with me, when everyone leaves. Making sure I don’t shy away from experiences because I fear them. She is always present. Because she knows I will be more at ease. Because no other presence reassures me as much as hers.  

Any fear I walk into in life, it is her that will always follow me into the dark. Bringing her beautiful light to it. The warmth of which sustains my own. My Rhea!

- Gauri Verma

(Gauri is the twin sister of Rhea. She is a fashion designer and Rhea is a lawyer.)