People have always told me how they wish they had a twin growing up. I used to be jealous of those who do not have a twin. I love my sister Johnna, but the situations we go through together takes a toll on us. We never get treated like we are different people. Growing up, we would get the same things for Christmas and our birthdays, the only difference was the color. Our parents would dress us the same; she was the pink twin and I was the purple twin.
It was 9:00 in the morning in the month of March, we had just arrived at the field in Connecticut, its turf. You could feel the sun’s reflection off of it. Although it was cold, it felt nice. My coach was making her announcements for the game.
“And Jill you’re on the mound”
I always try to go in with the mindset that I will do well. But in between innings, I was upset with the way my performance was going. My coach noticed, as I was in the hole up to bat, she pulled me aside. I have always been the person that hates talking about my feelings, so when she pulled me, I was feeling nervous. The nerves made me warm on the inside. As she was talking to me, her hand was rubbing my shoulder up and down trying to comfort me, she proceeded to say,
“ Jill, I just don’t think pitching is your thing anymore, I would stick to playing just third base”.
I didn’t even have anything to say back, the shock kept my mouth shut. She knows how I am so hard on myself and she had just ripped all the confidence I had left. My heart dropped, I could not believe what I just heard. My confidence in myself was completely gone because I knew she was picking my sister over me, who is also a pitcher. This feeling that I had, I couldn’t even describe. My parents sitting behind this conversation, them seeing me absolute starstruck left them in complete utter shock. The next inning I was on the bench and I saw her put my sister in to pitch. Which was not the best feeling in the world. It felt like I was being betrayed as a teammate and a sister, but I knew it was not my sister’s fault. As my sister did her thing, she was striking people out left and right. I was happy for her but hated her at the same time. She was doing much better than me. Which is a horrible feeling because when people aren’t the ones comparing us, I will compare myself to her, and try to meet the same expectations as she is achieving because it was starting to become a normal feeling to me.
Club season finally came to an end, then it was high school season where I was named Captain, I quit pitching entirely and focused on playing third base. Not for my old coach but for me. The mindset I was in when I was pitching was horrible. I was constantly comparing myself to my sister, game after game, I would compare the statistics we had. My highschool coach put me at third base one game my junior year, she liked the way I played there. Senior year, that was my position, I played there everyday, I truly loved it. I had noticed my mental health has changed for the better, I focused on only my position and was confident in myself. People have always said that baseball and softball were a mental sport, I didn’t believe it until I was going through it.
At McCarthy Elementary School, me and Johnna were in the same kindergarten class. Comparisons were always the topic of conversation with kids.
“Who’s faster?”, “Who’s smarter?”
We would reply with the answer without thinking anything of it. We would prove who was faster by racing each other in our orange colored gym class. As the time went on, the comparisons got old as well. In high school, my sister always had the better grades. My parents thought that since we were twins, we should be achieving the same things as well. This is not true, and for this reason, I am extremely hard on myself – although these challenges made me who I am today. We both came home with our report cards, she had all A’s, I had A’s and B’s as well as some C’s. When my mom hung her’s up on the fridge instead of mine I was not only angry at them but at myself as well.
As time went on, I started to care less and less about what people had to say about me and my sister. I cared so much at first because all I wanted was to be my own person, but everyone saw us as one. We finally had our own lives in high school, we had different friends, different styles, and then finally different sports. She focused more on dance as her main sport, she still played softball, but did not give it as much attention. My senior year of high school was my year for softball. I was signed as captain as previously said, and me and her started every game. But everyone could tell my heart was in it and hers wasn’t. People finally saw us as just sisters and not just “the twins”. Time definitely took a toll on me and my sister as twins. It took a while for us to get to the point where we are now.
College has definitely had an impact on us being our own separate people, she is doing her own thing at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, and I am doing my own thing at Westfield State University in Massachusetts. I now love being a twin, and sharing that to other people and seeing their reactions, because not everyone can say they have shared the same experiences I have had. Time allowed me to change my perspective of being a twin because now I realize I always have someone by my side, and someone who will always understand what I am going through, we are always there for each other whenever we need. Before, I never took any of that into consideration, I always just saw her as competition. We learned to keep the comparisons to the side and not let it bother us, we now just laugh it off. Over time, I’ve come to realize that, in contrast to my twin sister, I should not have given what people thought of me as much concern.
