Weak Average

This realisation (that I am about to share) too hit me like anything this past week.

Quite frankly, I don’t even know if anyone reads it, but just putting it down, putting it out there feels like completing and accepting an incomplete, and an erstwhile in-conflict thought. So, here I am, writing…and writing…and writing. Till what’s inside me, is outside me…and hence doesn’t feel so heavy inside me anymore.

For years I shared my childhood pictures very very selectively. Not to say I didn’t share it with many people, I did, I shared it with almost all my friends, all my partners, maybe even colleagues, acquaintances. But, what I shared was very well thought of, carefully selected. I shared the pictures in which my sister and I looked very similar, very twins. We looked more or less of the same height, more or less same build etc. I made sure not to share, or if I did, then quickly remove, those pictures in which we looked different. Like the one below:

The tinier one here is me.

And even though we’re both ‘twins’ — we were born together, we were fraternal twins — we didn’t really grow up as such, not for the first 10 years or so.

I was born weaker, I was told. I was placed in an incubator, I was told, since I couldn’t breathe on my own (not too well at least). I was also told that my digestion was poor and it would be a pain to make me poo.

I was told that I was also very low maintenance as a baby — I didn’t cry a lot, so I didn’t need to be fed again and again, or to be held. All I did was lie down (on a bed I am guessing) and sleep. My mother says that very happily. That I didn’t ask to be fed, held, or entertained much (not as often as my sister I am guessing). Maybe I didn’t have too much energy to do all that? Digest, cry, too much breathing. It can be taxing. Ask me now, I can surely tell it is!

Anyway, growing up, we grew up at different paces — I was small and weak, shorter than the other kids of my class, shorter than the average kid height that time, shorter than the average female height for children of classes KG-4th/5th. My sister, however, was tall! She was taller than the average, the average kid in the class, she was taller than the average female height, or even the tallest perhaps. She would often, as I recollect, be asked to stand in the boy’s queue at assemblies because she was taller than the girls.

She, my sister, was also very strong. Which I guess I never would realise until I’d ask her to play WWF with me. Haha. Talk about masochism. I guess I’ve been a little masochist since birth. Ab, it makes sense also, the world tells you you’re one and the same person, twins you know. School teachers would even ask us ridiculous questions (and try practically) like if I hit one would the other feel it, like the Bollywood movie Judwa?! How ridiculous!! These are the people who’re educating us. I’m sorry for ourselves. Anyway, me being me, and thinking my sister and I are practically the same would really nudge her to play WWF with me, to the point of pissing her off. For me WWF was playing, for her WWF was fighting. Well…we already can sense who’s the smarter one here. Anyway, she’d really fight, with full-force and then I would whimper. I would fight for even a breath. She was sooo, sooooo much more powerful than me. In front of her, I always felt like a rope…like a rubber-band, just flailing around. Whereas she felt like steel. We didn’t feel the same…even though everyone said we were.

I’m sure she felt her weaknesses, her vulnerability, but for now, I’d like to talk about me.

In school, in academics as well, I guess I really tried very very hard… for what? Maybe to be the same, but we were not. She was probably gifted, me, haha, cursed perhaps?

After years and years we opened our beds and saw our old drawings and colouring books. While she coloured perfectly, I don’t think I knew what colouring meant. Forget colouring outside the lines, I’ve coloured in random zig-zag lines. I don’t think I could even sit and colour. I also remember extreme nervousness and fear in writing in cursive, sticking to those lines we were supposed to stick to. I remember our teacher looking down, me writing, and I remember unable to. I also remember having to sit for a dictation — it was just writing months of a year, dictated by our class teacher. I remember I couldn’t wrap my head around why Ocktober was not that, but October. And I remember while the entire class was done with theirs, I couldn’t finish writing my 12 months. I was still stuck at ‘Ocktober’. The teacher pointed out my mistake but I couldn’t move past it. She made me sit at her table, leaving my desk, only so she could ‘help’ me. I also saw that I drew mountains hanging. Yep! My mountains were hanging. Remember that one scenery we all were made to draw when we were little — those triangle mountains, the sun rising, very happily from between those, and the river flowing, again, with gusto. Well, I drew all that alright, but my mountains were hanging. We were told to draw the triangles from the upper end of the sheet (so it would be easier to have a baseline to draw), and I apparently just couldn’t wrap my head around the base then being on the inside of the paper rather than the outside. So, I coloured my mountains top to bottom, and bottom being their sharp edges facing downward, toward the inside of the pages. My mountains were hanging from the sky, and resting on the ground, like an inverted pyramid.

This, and so many other quirks, rather limitations, stupidities that made me unlike my sister. She seemed like a normal kid, me, I was slow. I was below average, in my height and otherwise. I remember not being able to finish my exams on time, not only dictations, but even drawings I couldn’t. I remember my sister finishing hers and then helping me with mine, colouring rigorously, because time had run out and I was still drawing (I hadn’t yet come to the colouring part). I remember sitting alone for hours, just scratching my own injuries, till there were deep gashes— I remember my mother saying just one thing — “mat kar nishan reh jaega”. Sadly enough, I don’t remember her seeing what it was I was scratching so deeply, or to try to put some ointment or anything. I also remember sneaking my way into the balcony and scratching the wall and eating that mitti. My sister did not do any of these things. I also ate a lot of chalk and chalk powder. It made my mouth drool like anything. Of course I tried to share that happiness with my sister and then got caught — my parents paid too much attention to her…so I got a little as an extension.

Anyway, of late I also noticed the same when I grew up — I never have as much energy or enthusiasm as my sister has. She’s been a regular at the gym/workout — I’ve never been able to go for more than 2–3 days, the 2–3 times I tried. She likes travelling, I don’t. She likes working 6 days a week, I can barely manage 4. She likes addressing bigger groups, I like one-to-one interactions. She’s done well at work, me, average at best. I don’t think I was made for the highly functional, enthusiastic, and competitive world she seems to have taken to. I think it was a disservice done to me, to have made me study beside her. Maybe we could be batch-mates, just like any other classmates, but I think it was further a disservice to me to make me compete with her — to always take her as a reference point I always had to try to reach. I mean, I am tired. Whom was I kidding, I was not born with the energy she was born with, neither the skill, nor the mental and emotional bandwidth. For the longest time, I didn’t want to acknowledge it for myself too — I believed children to be blank slates, but now I acknowledge — we’re twins but we were born different. And it’s been exceedingly tiring to try to be same (or even similar).

I think I just have to admit to myself, first, that we’re not the same. I am average at best, and she is exceptional. She can travel whereas I can at best commute. She can address, whereas I can at best communicate — which I do find myself struggling with as well — I hate making eye-contact. I cannot even begin to explain the discomfort I’ve been in the last 10 years trying to be social. Very uncomfortable! I think I developed a ‘charm’ as a protective mechanism — that people are either charmed by me or scared of me, but in reality, I’ve been the one who’s been scared. Since birth that too. I remember, and people have given me so much shit for this (mostly my family), that my sister would go to school without me on days that I was unwell, but I would never go without her. She never got the opportunity to have a sibling who would get notes or HW for her. I was so useless.

I was not as good at drawing as she was, I was not as good at studies as she was, I was not as good at work. I only grew as tall as her when she stopped growing. I was never as strong as her — physically or emotionally. I never had the willpower or patience or discipline that she had. I never had the financial acumen or stability that she had. And I hate to say this because I had some good friends, but I am a very poor judge of people when it came to liking people, as more than friends. I made choices that didn’t stick, didn’t support, didn’t even respect me or my boundaries.

We were never the same — we never will be. I will continue to operate from my very limited lung capacity, from my very limited energy, and from my below average, or average at best mental capacity. I am emotionally way more fragile than I’d have liked to believe earlier (because I always only saw myself as a reflection of her). So, I will continue to ask for support and work toward it in therapy (maybe even start asking for some emotional support outside — friends maybe, partner, I don’t know if I’ll have one again ever). I will also work at the capacity that I can manage, even if it means working way less, and hence earning way less — I anyway would work myself to a crash and hence end up not earning for years altogether, while I tried to come out of that crash (burnout). I will also not be travelling on the crazy trips people (not just my sister but friends, family etc.) want to plan. As confirmed by my doctor (sometime around Nov-Dec) I cannot take rigorous trips — and his words not mine, but seemed like my own, “If you want to take a vacation, go to Goa, maybe sit in the sun at the beach — don’t go to the hills”. My sister, she goes to the hills every year. My parents, loved going to hills — what did I do there — accompanied them and more often than not, I was sick. Vomiting…all the time. Unable to breathe. Panic attacks in large family gatherings (even in the fucking plains — in my hometown). That’s who I am. I am not some social butterfly, full of energy, full of charm, or full of ambition. I need rest, a lot of it, because all these things that I have been — I’ve been masking. Big time.

In the last 2–3 months, both some therapist friends, and some neurodivergent strangers alike have even asked me if I am neurodivergent as well. Maybe, maybe not? Who knows. I didn’t know of neurodivergence growing up, I didn’t know of developmental trauma growing up, I didn’t know that two people raised in the same house are not raised by the same parents. I didn’t know or I didn’t acknowledge any or all of the above. But, now, the only thing I do know is to acknowledge. Acknowledge that I am not similar to my twin sister, I am very very different. Extremely limited. And the next few minutes, hours, days, maybe weeks, maybe months, if at all years will go in reminding myself to live like myself, and not like my sister.

I am no exceptional human-being, I am no topper, I am no corporat, I am no golden-child, I am a weak, average kid (now adult) at best. I am a Weak, Average (like Girl, Interrupted).