For My Twin

    I used to hate being a twin. I'd rage at God for making two people so similar they were destined to be compared every day of their lives. I even blamed being a twin for my eating disorder, since it was comparative comments like "your sister is thinner than you" or "you're fuller than your sister" that helped spur me onto the starvation route.
    I was so relieved when we made a pact not to attend the same college.

She's on the right and my cousin is in the center. Isn't my twin pretty?

    But then college actually came. And I started recovering from the disorder and restarting my relationship with God, and I started realizing how much I missed her. How wrong I had been to put the blame on her.
    It's funny how distance actually made us closer. How, as we grew as people and inhabited our own separate abilities, we realized how close we really were.
    See, I'm a scientist and I write fantastical, surrealist stories that inspire. She's also a writer, but she's  passionate about creating realistic stories that will wrench your heart and guts out. Actually. She's incredibly talented and I used to be jealous of the attention she got, because generally people make the assumption that scientist =/= writer, and so I told her I hated her at one point.
    Ha. Hate? Blasphemy. She's the one person I told my depression to last fall, who knew just how bad I'd fallen. She's the person whose love for teaching and helping children in India has awakened my soul to other cultures and different ways of relating to God.
    And so when I found out she was graduating early, I felt a lump in my throat because we weren't doing the same thing anymore.
    And now she's done gone and moved to India, nearly halfway around the globe, and she's designing literature for children there. Incredible. I'll be honest, I couldn't stand the heat and crowds for very long. But she can, because she's smart and compassionate and God made her very special, even if she doesn't entirely know that.

Silly is how we do.

    Her name is Kate, Kate Evelyn Danahy. She's going to write stories and probably be famous some day: another great American author, and I don't say this lightly (although I do hope to have my own writing accomplishments too, ha). She's brilliant and warm and loving and she wants to give herself to working for
nonprofits.
    Incredible, right? Uh-huh.

    I love you, twinner.

Love,
Kelley (or Kelleth, since that's what you call me).