Alone

The longest I've ever spent away from my sister was thirteen minutes and twenty-three seconds. I had emerged earthside on our birthday, January 17, 2002, and she was right behind me. And ever since, we've been together, each sister tagging along with the other through all of childhood's triumphs and failures. We shared a crib, then a bedroom, then a school, a friend group, even our American Girl Doll, Samantha. We have simply never been apart. Not until March 20, 2020, when the University of Notre Dame did the unthinkable to two inseparable twins: separate us.

It was Daisy who got rejected. She had to deal with the absolute, soul-crushing feeling of getting to rejected from our dream school, and I had to deal with the absolute, soul-crushing feeling of having something my best friend so desperately wanted. I'm not sure why neither of us thought this might happen. We were prepared for rejection, we're not stupid. Even my parents had resigned to feel that they probably weren't going to send their daughters to their highly selective alma mater. But even though my grades and test scores were higher in high school than Daisy's, we had always assumed that Notre Dame-and the other schools we applied to- understood that we were a package deal. So when the emails came in, we were shocked to say the least. I screamed and my heart rose to the ceiling as I realized that all of my childhood dreams were coming true. My parents' eyes were misty, and I was about ready to bawl. Then, I looked over at my twin, tears already rolling down her face, and the chaos began.

Of course I offered not to go. When Daisy got her acceptance to the University of San Diego, I started to envision myself on their hilly, Mediterranean-style campus. I researched merit scholarships and dorm room sizes. But Daisy, angel that she is, never let me say I was going to USD with her. I would talk about it, and she'd give me a knowing look and reply in her lilting voice, "Eleanor, you are not going to school with me. You are gonna live at Notre Dame, in Walsh Hall, like Mom, and you're gonna get the best English literature education money can buy. Period. End of story." And it was. I couldn't turn down Notre Dame, no matter how much I wanted to stay with my sister. So on decision day, we donned different college caps on our Instagram posts, and I felt like I was on the precipice of something incredible, but it required me to do something I had never done before: step of the edge of the known and catapult myself into the great unknown of my future.

Fast forward two-and-a-half months, and we got the news that that not only could Daisy not come with me to drop off (only two guests, COVID problems), but that she wasn't beginning school at all. All of the schools in California were closed, meaning Daisy was staying home. Honestly? I'm a little jealous. As the days count down to me leaving for Notre Dame, I'm not sure I'm ready to be alone. I'll tell you willingly that I'm sheltered, a white bread, upper middle class girl from the purest of White American suburbs, a Catholic school, nuclear family child who has never had to deal with hardship greater than a tardy slip and Saturday detention. I have doting parents and a built-in-sidekick, and now it's all ending pretty abruptly. It's three days until move-in and I'm savoring every home-cooked meal and fresh load of folded laundry that I have left. I am faced with the startling reality that I don't know how to do anything for myself, by myself.

When it all comes down to it, I am starting to realize that maybe I don't know who I am without my sister, or even my parents. Who am I? Who exactly is Eleanor Murphy? When my college application asked me that question, I, ironically, wrote about my sister. I am a twin. It is a fact about me so integral to my person. With the exception of the first thirteen minutes and twenty-three seconds of my life, I have been lucky enough to have someone with me all of the time. Fortunate I am, yes, but I have been so safe and secure all of my life that I've never yet felt the impulse to run away, to find myself and return changed. I've never been particularly inspired, never been moved beyond the scope of Father Finnegan's Sunday homily, never even felt the emptiness of my own emptiness, a Dunning-Krueger style of irony that plagues me as I sit in my childhood bedroom, still decorated with paintings of horses and One Direction posters. I put my clothes in boxes, buy various under-bed storage solutions, and decide which comforter I want on my bed, but it still feels too surreal. Too empty, too lonely, too everything. Tomorrow we'll be down to two days, then to one, then I'll be there. There, surrounded by my peers, but lost in the mess that is life without my family.

Now, we're packing the car. My dad is Tetris-stacking my bags, and Daisy and I are decorating the windows with our paint markers. I'm trying to be excited, I really am. God, what is wrong with me? Why does college feel like such a burden, something to get through rather than something I want to do? I have always known I'd have to go off on my own eventually, I just wish I were doing it with more of a grasp on my reality, on myself as a person and a woman rather than as just a sister and a daughter.

I'm sitting on the grass, now. The sun is setting in its slow, aimless way, bathing the sky in amber light. I let my hands run over the sharp, freshly cut grass, watching kids race their bikes down the cul de sac. It seems not so long ago that I was losing those races, furiously pedaling on my blue and white cruiser, but always pulling up to the finish line short. Maybe that's it, maybe the finish line of my childhood is coming up too fast. Maybe I haven't changed since I was that seven-year-old girl too scared of crashing to see how fast I could really go.

I am so lost in my thoughts that I don't even hear Daisy coming to sit next to me on the lawn.

"It's crazy that it's over, isn't it? What was it that we read last year, about the earth and childhood?"

I smile, lean my head on her shoulder. "It was The Mill on the Floss. 'We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?'"

"Wow."

"Yeah."

We don't say anything after that. We just sit, listening to the sounds of joyful children and neighborhood birds, staring at the rapidly darkening sky. I'm not sure how long we stay like this, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, soaking in the remaining moments of our childhoods. It is now that I realize: I'll never be alone, not really. Even if we are about to be hundreds of miles apart, being a twin will always be a defining part of my life. And that's okay. I can grow and change and become who I want to be, pushing the pedal down and embracing all of these new changes, and Daisy will too. But we'll always have each other to return to, to share in all of life's moments, just like this one.