Stepping Out of the Shadow of My Beautiful Twin

I can’t remember how many times I have been almost ‘admired’, not for who I was, but for who I was related to. This admiration would be expressed in the style of the following examples, on finding out I was related to my twin brother:

*(I’ll call him ‘Leon’ for privacy purposes)

“Oh, he’s your brother, he’s so cool!”

“What’s it like to be his sister?”

“Oh, you’re Leon’s sister. What’s it like to be related to him?”

“Oh… yeah, Leon, I know him, everyone knows him.”

“You’re Leon’s sister! Ahh, wow, you’re so lucky.”

You get my drift.

In my late teens and twenties, my twin was one of those guys who was looked up to in our town. You didn’t mess with him! Six years before him, our older brother, Timmy, carried that same revered reputation.

Timmy would knock the shit out of anyone who challenged or threatened him. He was a fighter. His rage over our mum leaving his father, when Timmy wasn’t even five, and moving them hundreds of miles away, pumped through his veins. By the time he reached fifteen, he’d already been sent to borstal — a short stretch for his badass behaviour. Forty-eight years later, he’s still angry, but that’s another story.

I reminisce about that day he’d been released and arrived home, still wearing a silent but intimidating persona. On the journey back, he’d picked up a packet of sweets for my older half-sister. A painful pang of feeling left out of his thoughtful chocolate gift positioned itself in my heart. I was, somehow, deemed as nowhere near as special as my sister. After all, I had a different dad. Was that why I’d not mattered?

My late father, beautiful and edgy at the time yet emotionally immature, had, in my infant years, dated our bohemian but emotionally wounded mother. I say this with some empathy; I’m affected at the thought of any adult who’s endured a harsh childhood, to gain little self-awareness — that catapults them into a fucked up life. I guess it reflects on my own story.

Growing up, I witnessed fights in my home. If it weren’t my parents, it would be Dad and Timmy, or Timmy and my twin. Or my twin and I; we fought every day until the day we turned fifteen. There were often ugly, gaping holes smashed through the walls by the adults. It felt raw and disconcerting.

In our mid-teens, my twin and I left home and as a few years rolled by, the same-aged kids in our town started to look up to my twin; he was a beautiful, bad boy. I was cool by association.

It’s funny because I think back to our first day of pre-school as four-year-olds; he’d passionately sobbed from his little heart — he couldn’t bear to be separated from our mother.

‘Why would you sob for her?’ —went through my young mind.

Only because I hadn’t been privy to how it had felt to be so marvelled by her loving and nurturing tones — she’d declined to shine any of those golden rays towards me.

But for my twin, he was her green-eyed, angelic-faced son.

My first memory of my twin was sitting across from him in our Silver Cross pram. I was yanking hard at his short, jet-black curly locks. I vividly recall my baby self feeling a little venomous. Maybe we began our first fifteen-year squabble in our mother’s womb.

Or perhaps I had been conceived within a toxic energy, my mother being angry all her life. I’m sure I came out wrong, picking up on all of her and her ancestors’ stuff.

Fifty years or so after that memory of my twin and me sitting in that pram, I had tried to connect with my eighty-something mother again after a long no-contact hiatus (for fear of her passing on without a word from me). She apologised profusely for doting after him and not me. Her golden boy, his handsome face. A shiny seraphim angel.

I didn’t feel any happier or any more consoled by her words. And I didn’t have any hard feelings. Only because I had once upon a time unconsciously parked my off-centre looks and not-enoughness as part of my identity.

My mother and siblings had those fascinating sea green eyes, while my brown eyes, to me, were the colour of mud, and the colour of my Mediterranean father’s eyes. The different one. I felt that infamous ‘not wanted’ feeling from my soul. I was the half-breed, the thick-thighed, ugly kid. Nothing exceptional. I didn’t know then that I had mirrored that ugly sense of self from my parents, particularly my unattached and alcoholic late father, whom I had so deeply adored. My twin had too.

Looking back, I understand that my feeling ugly inside and out had impacted the trajectory of my life. The self-sabotage, my decisions, how I had let myself allow men to use me, my toxic relationships, and even my career. How I wore my entirety deeply affected my sense of worthiness.

As a teenager, I would study my features in the mirror. Most teenagers do, particularly in their quest to fight their newly acquired self-consciousness and learn who they are. I sensed my infatuation and narcissism, although I didn’t know what that word meant at the time, or why I only saw a strange face staring back at me.

But that reflection wasn’t me, it was the stories I had learnt about myself. It was the cracked mirrors of my caregivers I had peered into as a small babe and infant that hadn’t been able to reflect who I truly am from the core, regardless of my human suit. My whole being, encapsulated by a spiritual fascia — every part of me is a continuum, with the nucleus of that wholeness denied a healthy concept of what it is to thrive as a human.

I feel solemn knowing that how we perceive ourselves either makes us or breaks us. People spend a huge amount of money on cosmetic procedures in an attempt to empower their identities. And let’s be honest here, I would probably be one of them if I had the funds. I read of a woman, over ten years ago, who had spent well over £50,000 so that she could drastically change the way she resembled her mother.

Shit, I get that too, as one time I would have done anything to not look like my mother. If I looked like her, it meant I was as fucked up as her. Ironically, I was, yet I am beyond grateful for the self-awareness and yearning to break through an unloved indoctrination that emerged in my forties. It doesn’t make it as easy as arrogance does, but it changes my legacy.

And it’s only in more recent years that I have learnt about the power of self-compassion to be able to reframe unkind thoughts, and to cultivate the seeds of self-acceptance. And having been blessed with a daughter, the pride and gratitude that come with that, as I marvel at her wonderfulness, have catapulted me into delving into the deeper parts of my broken psyche.

Every one of us owns a face that houses a genuine soul, who is important to someone. I can always know this for sure when someone dear to me passes over. They are so missed, and the love I have for them is highlighted through their death.

Too much emphasis has been placed on how we look rather than how we accept the miracle of our existence. I came to learn recently that I had been rejecting the parts of me that were rejected by my parents, each in their own way and by their own wounds. Having seen past that veil, it makes sense why I felt deeply unhappy, numb and disconnected from myself.

Let’s witness our old stories as just that — stories. Let’s see our faces as maps to our life, growth, specialness, but more importantly, our common humanity.

^^^

My poetry book, In Search of My Soul, is a collection of poems that stem from a heart that has been breaking away from inherited dysfunction, anxiety, and depression, and the coping mechanisms that anaesthetised this old paradigm.

The themes entail darkness, pain, and hope, as well as some light-hearted poetry genres towards the back of the book.

© Chantal Weiss 2026. All Rights Reserved