When I think about our conflict and how divided we became as teens, the secrets and tensions, I still knew she was the most important person in the world. There was such a primal instinct to protect each other when we were in that state. One thing that helped bring us together was when we were both at different levels of intoxication – whether it was drinking or doing acid. I also thought I understood who Tegan was more than Tegan did. A lot of our turmoil during our teens came from me withdrawing and building a new life without her. I wanted to keep it all from Tegan, and it was the first time I’d felt like that. Good luck with your clown thing, but I’m good.”Īdolescence was when I started to understand a few things about myself, about my sexuality, that I had always known but now had a word for. Tegan really got into clowns around this age and I was like: “Yeah, I just don’t feel it. I loved to read the newspaper or to draw – introverted activities – whereas Tegan was always putting on performances or instructing our friends to do lip-syncing. We liked all the same things, but would often have individual interests. While we weren’t “popular kids”, we were popular as we were cute twins who were funny and goofy. I was more of a stoic keep-my-feelings-to-myself type. She would cry on the first day of term because she wanted to be in the same class as me, and I’d get dragged over to comfort her. Tegan was a much more outwardly emotional kid than me. Tegan and I got on really well until middle school. While we weren’t ‘popular kids’, we were popular as we were cute twins who were funny and goofy Whatever battle we had had that day, we must have won, as we clearly picked our own outfits. We were unfussy, scrappy and liked wearing sweatpants and no shirts. It was always a drama, because she wanted us to dress up and be feminine. My mom would take us annually, sometimes twice a year, to get photos done at the mall. We had this chest-forward self-belief that breaks my heart. We’d cut our long hair off, and while I don’t know if we fully understood our gender expression at the age of seven, I can see the change in how we carried ourselves. We look like young estate agents posing at the opening of our own shop. This is from an era of photos where we have these terrible, unstylish haircuts, but we were so confident.
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