Although it is true that sometimes it is one voice or the other, or one story or the other, please be clear: this is our story. But perhaps it is easier to start at the beginning. We were born as one to our parents and placed on the single trajectory that we would call our lives. It was innocent enough, the mistake of it all, the oneness, for there was no evidence of twoness: one egg, one heart, one mind, one name. Just as we have always known that there were two, it was thus only natural to us that there were two. It could be no other way, and all the complications that came with the inconceivability of two were, for us, merely the nominal struggles of life. Yet when our mother heard us playing in our room, she would find it strange that we would argue over which clothes to put on the doll, whether to paint or whether to build blocks, or whether to eat the snack cookies now or save them for later, when we were really hungry. “No need to struggle, Julia,” she would comfort us, and we thought she understood also, understood the inherent struggle between us who were both Julia but were not one Julia.
