Wombmates

Identical mirror twins reflect on what being a twin means to them

Story and photo by Nathan Barber

Around the end of the fourth week, we shared our first heartbeats. By the 14th week we realized we weren’t alone. At 21 weeks, we heard our first sounds together. Someone kept rubbing us saying how excited they were to be an older brother. That same voice would tell us stories about magical genies and flying carpets, Neverland and some guy called Captain Hook. By week 30 we were finally able to see who’s been kicking at us for the last 210 days.

Ardmore, Oklahoma, March 22, 1996 — the sky tore open. My wombmate left my side for the first time in our lives. A pair of hands reached in and tore me from my world and brought me into a whole new one. This is the day Jon and Nathan Barber were born. Jon legally changed their name to Jay when they got married in 2021 so I will refer to them as Jay from now on.

According to genome.gov, monozygotic twins is the official name, but most people call us identical twins. We aren’t your average monozygotic twins either, we’re mirror twins. According to healthline.com, it’s a phenomenon that occurs in about 25% of identical twins.

Developmentally speaking, an interesting thing about twins is that at an early age, we had a “twin language.” This occurs early in language development before speech skills are fully developed. This “twin language” appears because they have the same exact reference point regarding social context, history and environment and are better able to understand each other's immature speech, according to an article published in the National Library of Medicine.

I do recall family members saying they’d watch us play and it was like we were speaking our own language, off in our own world. What I can say to this is that I remember not needing to speak at all. Jay and I were so in tune with each other that words were often unnecessary.

We used to be so in tune with each other that we would have the same dream. It was a recurring dream around the age of 4 or 5 in which our mother would be driving the Dodge Caravan somewhere and she would stop and get out for whatever reason. While she was gone, the van would start up and drive itself, inevitably into a tree, or into a body of water. This dream kept repeating until we figured out how to stop it from crashing.

We used to say we dreamt it together as if we were visitors in each other's dreams. As much as I want to believe this phenomenon, I cannot confirm that we were visiting each other's dreams. But having the same dreams in tandem is a real-life phenomenon that I still can’t quite explain with hard scientific facts. We shared a bed for a good chunk of our early childhood, and we would always end up holding hands, sleeping foot to foot, or yin and yanging as if we were in utero.

Everyone asks the same two questions when they find out I'm a twin, so I’ll answer them for you. No, we’ve never switched places, and no, twin telepathy doesn’t exist, at least not in the way you want it to. It exists as an intense feeling of empathy more than anything. When I cry, they cry. When I laugh, they laugh. When I smile, they smile. When I hurt, they hurt. We have the same familiarity a 50-year relationship might have and we were born with that connection. Jay said they’re able to see themself or recognize themself in people quickly because we see ourselves in each other. Jay believes our connection has made us naturally empathic people. “There’s an emotional blurry line between myself and someone else,” they said.

While our physical features might be mirrored, some personal qualities are polar opposites. They’ve always been the softer, gentle one, whereas I was always the reactive, hot-headed one. They played with Barbies; I played with Hot Wheels. They excelled in school; I couldn’t keep still. They loved books; I loved sports. They picked all the girl characters in video games, and I picked the most ripped, overly masculine representation of a man possible.

Jay attributes a lot of our differences to the golden child and black sheep scapegoat idea. Jay was conditioned in more positive ways, and I was more often given negative reinforcement, which pinned me as the “bad one.” The different responses and reactions we got from our behaviors pulled different aspects of our personalities out. Jay was held in high regard for being the softer and more effeminate one, whereas our father would see me as the troublemaker, reinforcing the against-the-grain mentality I developed.

I was handled with a heavy hand, quite literally. Our father was a bad man to say the least. Parts of him were still back in Vietnam and his Hells Angels days, and he conditioned me to be his little marine. He saw that Jay would tear up and cry at the slightest threat, so he turned all that anger onto me, who had been conditioned to “take it like a man” and better not think about shedding a tear. I can cry now; it just happens unexpectedly when a sentimental moment happens on The Simpsons, King of the Hill or South Park.

I became the black sheep of the family, the thing our father could point at and blame everything on. I figured if that’s what was expected of me, I’d be the blackest sheep there was. After being told all I could amount to was a liar, thief, piece of shit drug addict, that’s all I believed myself capable of being. It took me over 10 years to be able to see myself as anything other than that. I never believed I was capable or worthy of anything other than a lost cause. I still struggle to celebrate my accomplishments in life or even recognize them as that.

Jay often asks themself how the different social pressures we face due to our sexual orientation might shape us differently. Jay has different social pressures on themself than I might as a straight man and vice versa. For example, I feel the need to be a provider, and Jay has always had a hard time understanding that. Beauty standards are completely different for us. They’re very desirable in their culture, and I recognize that I don’t necessarily fit the conventional beauty standards for a man. I am a catch though and someone will realize that someday.

The identity crisis started at a young age. Most of the time when people referred to us, they would say “The Boys” or “The Twins,” rarely, if ever, by our own names. We were so inseparable that we even had our school photos taken together. Not by our choice, our father was just so cheap that he saw a chance to get a two-for-one deal on school pictures. In that yearbook where it says “Jon Barber” is a picture of the two of us. I snuck back and got my own photo taken. I was so angry in that photo and so desperately wish I had a copy of it now.

I experience an identity crisis every time I look at pictures from our childhood. We were so identical that even I can’t tell us apart, which comes with an uncanny sort of feeling. When the average person looks at a photo of themselves, they probably identify themselves in that photo and recognize it as something that belongs to them. But I don’t get that feeling. This causes me to have a sort of disconnect with my childhood photos because I can’t see myself in them. I don’t see myself. I don’t see it as my photo. It’s our photo.

Nothing was ever mine, or theirs. It was ours. My birthday will never be my birthday; it’s our birthday. Any choice I’ve ever made in life has never been mine alone to make. I’ve always had to check with my twin to make sure they’re agreeable to it. At times I’ve made drastic life-changing choices, like moving to New York City on a whim, as an attempt to feel like I had control of my own life. I almost always side with the choice they think is the better one, even if I’m not all in on it. This has led to some complicated feelings of a lack of say in my own life, as if the life I live isn’t entirely my own.

Being identical twins makes our world twice as small. We’re twice as recognizable and make twice the impression on the world around us. Growing up in a small town together, for better or worse, people couldn’t tell us apart.

Jay came out of the closet at a very young age, 13 years old. Kids can be brutal, and dumb, especially in Stanwood, Washington. I would often be on the receiving end of homophobia because kids were too dumb and insecure to tell us apart. I’d get shoved around in the locker room while being called a f-----, pushed around in the halls on my way to class, and anywhere else in that godforsaken town. I loved it. I wanted any excuse to get in a fight, and better me than my twin I figured.

When we lived in Seattle, people would recognize me because of Jay. I’d go to a random Starbucks downtown and the barista would be so sweet to me. I thought it was because I was a cute and charming guy. I’d get the drink at the end of the transaction and see that they had written my twin’s name on the cup, and then it clicked.

Now they’re living in a town where I made the big first impression, and they’re often mistaken for me around town. It’s gotten to a point where they don’t bother correcting people and just act like they are me. After a while it gets annoying having to correct people over and over again, so sometimes, we just impersonate the twin we’re being mistaken for.

I was an extremely misguided child, but Jay was always my northern star, reminding me which way was up. I used to live life as if it was a contest to be the angriest and most self-destructive person on the planet, and I was determined to win first place. I certainly wouldn’t be in college if it weren’t for them. I never saw myself as college material. They’ve always pushed me to be a better person and to never stop improving and was able to see the good in me that I was never able to see myself. They convinced me I was not the monster I had been made to believe. They were the voices of reason and kindness when I had no voice of my own. Jay started crying when I told them this, which made me start crying, so I told them to shut up.