Usually, a birthday is the one day meant for yourself. For me, it was about sharing. There were two names in the frosting, twice the candles and one moment where my twin brother Athri and I leaned in together to blow them out.
According to Sage Journals, one of the biggest challenges in parenting twins is helping them build individual confidence without tying their worth to each other’s outcomes, and looking back, I can see my parents were trying to do exactly that. Starting from preschool and all the way through elementary school, my parents contacted the school each year to request that we be placed in different classrooms. They wanted to prevent teachers from comparing us or grouping us instead of seeing us as individuals.
Growing up with a twin meant that most of my daily experiences were shared, especially at school. We discussed assignments, grades, teachers and tests constantly, and during our freshman year of high school, we even shared the same Latin II class.
The constant closeness between us shapes how we experience both success and failure. According to Psychology Today, twins often form especially strong emotional bonds because they grow up sharing experiences. When we struggled, it was easier because we were usually dealing with the same classes and tests at the same time, so we could motivate each other. But when only one of us did well, it felt harder because most of the classes we took were the same and scores always came back at the same time. We were taking the same courses and following the same curriculum, which meant my parents were celebrating one of us while worrying about the other at the same moment.
Athri and I share the same birthday and home, and sometimes even a name, as I’ve been referred to as Athri more times than I can count. Ironically, there were moments when people saw us as the same person. Because Athri and I share a birthday and the first three letters of our names, medical offices and once even the DMV mistakenly merged our records, registering us as the same person – although it’s something we laugh about now.
Photo used with permission of Venkat Cheboli.
Being boy-girl twins is also unique because we grow by different standards, such as gender. Athri was expected to be more confident, assertive and naturally better at things like driving, while I was expected to be more careful, organized and academically responsible.These assumptions weren’t true, but they influenced how others viewed us and compared us anyway.
Another challenge of having a twin is balancing when we are competitors and when we are teammates. Since we are in the same grade, competition happens in real time, without the distance or separation that usually exists between siblings who are years apart. Last year, Athri and I competed directly against each other in a business competition, and even though we both placed, the experience was extremely stressful. In our next competition, we decided to work together as partners instead. While collaboration has been smooth, there are moments when I regret being teammates, as working with him makes disagreements more personal and harder to separate from our sibling relationship.
At the same time, sharing life with a twin also comes with benefits that are hard to replicate. Regarding school, having someone in the same grade who understands the pressure of assignments, tests and expectations feels different from having a friend because Athri and I experience everything simultaneously and within the same family dynamic. We do not have an older sibling to guide us or a younger sibling to pass advice down to, so we usually rely on each other to process challenges as they happen. Athri and I often study together after school, compare notes and talk through upcoming deadlines. That shared understanding makes difficult moments easier to manage and reinforces that we are figuring things out together.
There have been moments of stress and plenty of arguments along the way. But it also meant always having someone who understands my experiences in a way no one else really can. No matter how complicated things get, there’s still no one I’d rather lean over a cake with to blow out the candles together.
