"I overheard a boy tell my sister, 'you're the hot one.'" The truth about jealousy as a twin.

I remember the first time I felt it. A weird, uncomfortable, messy feeling that was like a mixture between jealousy, embarrassment and anger.

I’m in Year 5 and while the class is working quietly, our teacher discretely asks my sister and me to come to her desk. 

She has something she wants to discuss with us – two orthodontically challenged 11-year-olds with awkward haircuts and uniforms that don’t quite fit – because she thinks we might be interested.

She’s decided to start a gifted and talented group, and would like us to be a part of it. As we smile and nod enthusiastically, with the kind of butterflies in our bellies that come only from feeling very noticed and particularly impressive, I cast my gaze down at a piece of paper sitting in front of her. 

In her notoriously messy handwriting, she’s written down a few names for the gifted and talented group, some with question marks beside them, some crossed out. 

On one line, she’s written: Jessie and Clare. Esp. Jessie. 

It takes me a moment to work out what ‘esp’ stands for. Even once it’s registered, I try to second-guess myself. I don’t want it to mean what I think it means because that makes me feel funny. 

Our family being weirdly... twin-ny. Image: Supplied.

She means ‘especially’. Especially Jessie. Clare’s clever, sure, but especially Jessie. 

I have countless ‘esp’ moments as I’m growing up. And I hate them. I hate them because they upset me and then I feel ashamed about being upset. I love my sister more than anyone in the entire world. She’s kind and supportive and she holds my hand when I’m scared or nervous or sad. So why does it hurt when she wins an award and I don’t?

It hurts when, once we hit puberty, a girl at school says Jessie has the body of a Barbie doll, and mine is a little bit like that but not really because I’m much shorter. 

It hurts when Jessie’s chosen for the netball team and I’m not, even though I know the fact is that I’m just not very good. 

It hurts when people pick her to be in their drama group and not me. When she’s invited to a birthday party and I go in the car with Mum to drop her off, because I like car trips with the two of them, but then find myself trying to avoid the eyes of the other girls, who might think I’m lonely and desperate. 

It hurts when boys say she’s prettier than me, and when boys I like say they like her instead. When her gift for writing is discovered and when she gives a speech to the entire school. 

Her success has always felt like our success, because we’re our own weird little team against the rest, but sometimes I’m plagued by the inevitable comparison. When you look the same, people arbitrarily try to differentiate you. Who’s the smart one? The funny one? The pretty one? The creative one? I dread the comparison because deep down, I’m certain I lose. Every time. 

It’s when we finish school that I feel the biggest blow. Our final marks are released and even though we come first and second in the year, she beats me by 0.2 and it feels like a numerical manifestation of what I’ve always felt about myself: not quite good enough. 

Moments of celebrating her – my favourite person, the person I want more for than myself – are sometimes simple and sometimes not. Sometimes, they’re tinged with my own sadness. As though I’m looking in a mirror at my own potential and watching myself fall short. 

I think my sister has the greatest mind I’ve ever known. She’s clever and curious and funny, and determined in a way I’m not sure I am. She takes risks. She meets new people. I’m in awe of her, and yet I’m terrified of what it is that stops me from being more like her. 

Of course, my sister has her own story she could write. When I met my partner young, she instead had to venture through years of heartbreak and mess to find her person. For me, that part was easy. 

The truth is, Jessie hasn’t beaten me on every occasion, by every metric, over the course of our whole lives. And she has often felt the same way I do, as though she’s living a life split in half, where achievement is tinged with the bittersweet reality that when one of you succeeds alone, the other one doesn’t. 

But Jessie is more gracious than I am. She doesn’t feel the ‘jealousy’ (although that isn’t the perfect word to describe it) in the dysfunctional way I do. 

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A post shared by Clare Stephens (@clare.stephenss)

I used to tell myself our differences – in confidence, in risk-taking, in character – were because we were fraternal twins, who in reality only had the same genetic similarity as regular siblings. We might be very physically alike, but the stuff on the inside just wasn’t the same. 

Then, a few years ago, a DNA test showed we were identical. This information was interesting and surprising to precisely no one except us, but I felt confronted by the fact we’d been given the same genetic material at birth. Why, then, did I feel like I was always losing?

I also knew this entire battle was wholly narcissistic and neurotic and lacking in gratitude. We are both exceptionally lucky. Even writing this makes me feel sick because sharing a womb and the world with Jessie has, and continues to be, the greatest blessing of my life. 

But recently, I started to wonder whether my own experiences of comparison, of missing the joy in big life moments because of an ugly, shameful shadow lurking in the corner, was more common than I’d thought. I wondered if even the people who appear to ‘have it all’ – talent, money, fame, a dream job – had their own shadow. One they didn’t talk about because they were ashamed of it, but also because they were never asked.

So in the second half of last year, I decided to create a podcast. Revolutionary, I know. 

I wanted to hunt down the people whose happiness looks uncomplicated and interrogate it. When I found them, I asked about jealousy. Insecurity. Regret. I asked them to share the moments the world told them they’d be happy, and they weren’t. 

The result is But Are You Happy, a podcast that drops every Thursday over the next eight weeks. 

But before we launched, my producer had a suggestion. “If you’re going to be asking people about their biggest vulnerabilities,” she asked, “isn’t it fair that you first share yours?” 

Episode 0, therefore, is my story. And while I cannot listen back myself, I hope it speaks to those of you who have struggled with comparison, or jealousy, or self-worth. 

At Mamamia, we have a saying that when you share a vulnerable part of yourself, someone, somewhere, will have a wound in the shape of your words. 

If you’ve ever had an ‘esp.’ moment, perhaps the conversations on But Are You Happy can help soothe that wound. 

You can listen to But Are You Happy on Apple or Spotify or by clicking play below. 

For more from Clare Stephens, you can follow her on Instagram.

Image: Supplied.

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