Differences

The last one-word essay I wrote before the O Levels. I just felt like posting it.

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“About the project, Lisa, how’s Friday for you?”

“Um, I’m Kaitlin,” I reply with an awkward laugh.

“Oh, right! Sorry about that, you two really–”

“Look alike? Yeah, I get that a lot.”

And I hated how nobody could tell the difference.

***
I have an identical twin, Lisa. Sometimes I try to pretend she is a doppelganger – we were hardly alike. She listened to classical music, (which, to me, is a complete drag) while I listened to pop. Our sense of humor is also as different as night and day – she often laughs at mildly funny things – as if it’s the epitome of classy comedy, when it clearly is not, and that often got on my nerves.

We liked different colors too: I like pink, she likes yellow.

I like chunky peanut butter, she likes hers creamy.

I like my eggs sunny-side up, while she prefers hers scrambled.

We were worlds apart! But nobody saw our differences. I still recall our parents mistaking us for each other, with our similar strawberry-blond hair and hazel eyes. Our freckles were even on the same place, near our cheekbones. People only see us as Lisa and Kaitlin, identical duplicates of one another.

But I have had it.

***

I step out of the shower, greeted by a horrific sight of Lisa in the exact sundress I was wearing to school.

“I thought Mum only bought one of that!” I nearly shrieked.

WELL APPARENTLY NOT, I continue yelling inside. Glaring hatefully at her, I stomped off without caring for her reply, grabbed the first shirt I saw and a pair of jeans and went back to the bathroom to change, taking note to slam the door.

Just to make sure people could tell us apart, I applied some black eyeliner around my eyes and pulled my hair into a fishtail braid, unlike her stupid ponytail.

Lisa’s face fell when she saw me, but that did nothing to induce any kind of guilt within me at all.

***

A late, breezy August greeted me as I sat alone on the porch in front of my school. Red and brown leaves rustled weightlessly around my feet and beyond while gleeful cries of young children whirled about in the back of my mind, blending into my thoughts. Lisa was probably attending her chemotherapy session at Cleveland Clinic. It was a shock – to all of us – when she was diagnosed with leukemia, especially since she was a picture of health.

Now her hair was thinning and she lost her eyebrows and eyelashes. Her face seemed…naked, in fact.

I am to blame, am I not? Apparently the heavens heard me after all. My ‘wish’ came true. Everyone could tell us apart now. Lisa’s the bald, sick one, they would probably say.

A red Audi pulled over.

“Where’s Lisa?” I asked my mum.

“She told me to pick you up first – she doesn’t mind waiting a little longer. Besides, she knew you’d be tired after practice.”

“But wasn’t she there since…eight this morning?”

My mum nodded, as if trying to tell me something.

And then I realized.

I realized we were indeed very different.

I was selfish and insensitive, making Lisa feel burdened because we looked the same when it was through no fault of hers at all, while she continued to care for me like any proper sister should. Focusing on trying to be different made me trample all over her feelings and become someone even I could not recognize – but she still accepted me as her sister. That was where we were different too, for if someone were to do the same thing to me…I probably would be less forgiving.

Guilt weighed down on me, gnawing my insides, then rinsing it with regret and sadness.

I was a horrible sister.

“Mum, do you think we could stop at the hairdresser’s first? I’ll be quick.”

***

A bouquet of cherry blossoms and poppies in hand, I opened the door.

Her look of anticipation vanished.

“Kaitlin! You’re…!”

“Bald – yes, thank you for noticing – I even got them to shave off my eyebrows, like yours! Here, these are for you,” I say, handing over the pale-pink and red bundle of flowers.

Her aghast face made me chuckle.

“But…why? Didn’t you want us to be different? Now you look…”

“Exactly like you.”

Rays of golden sunlight shone through the blinds. Our similarities were merely physical, and we both knew that we had a world of differences inside; so if other people still failed to differentiate us, well, it was their loss.

“Thank you,” she said, her eyes glistening.

And I knew she meant it for more than the flowers.