Individuality

What Makes You Different? 

According to a Google search, individuality can be defined as “the quality or character of a particular person or thing that distinguishes them from others of the same kind… separate existence.” 

As we all continue to reproduce and raise children, one thing that many suffer from is being recognized as an individual. I have a twin sister and, although we are not identical, it seemed as though it was extremely difficult for some people to tell us apart. Growing up, my parents would dress us alike (as many twins are dressed) but we didn’t see it that way. We wanted to be seen as different people at a very young age.

Babies are naturally born selfish so we grew up not wanting to look alike as well. To give a little difference, my parents would put us in the same outfit but would have us to wear different colors. This seemed to help us somewhat. My mother told me that when we started school, she requested that we not be placed in the same class so that we could learn to not depend on each other. As we got older, I think that this really did help us out a lot. We were able to form our own friendships outside of each other. This allowed us to form our own personalities independent of each other so people could really get to know us. We didn’t begin to have classes together until we were in high school, but even then, it would be only one class out of the entire day. By this time, our friends were able to tell us apart.

Once we finished high school, we went to two different colleges and people we amazed to know that we were twins when they seen us together. I think that we figured out who wanted to be as we grew into adults. Shockingly, we are a lot alike but we are still very different from each other. We tend to forget that we are twins because we feel as though we are just sisters who look alike. Few times people get us confused but they soon realize it when they don’t get the response that they were expecting. Now that we feel that we are so much different from each other, we find it fun to dress alike just to shock strangers when they look at us together.

I think it if wasn’t for our parents forcing us to separate from each other at such a young age, we wouldn’t have been able to become individuals and learn more about ourselves on our own.

---- Jackee Walker

Sources: Google.com