We are twins. Unidentical, different sexes but with the same story. Kind of. I’m the girl. We were born twenty-four years ago. After us, my parents didn’t have another child. The story has it that they suffered for many years looking for a child, and we came along. You can imagine their happiness, their glee and silent smiles. I can imagine them running around with us in their arms and showing us to the community, “See, we didn’t have any, but now we have two.”

FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP CHANNEL TO RECEIVE ALL STORIES IN YOUR INBOX

We were pampered while growing up. My parents weren’t rich. They were not poor either. They were there and there. The color between black and white but also not grey. They paid our fees on time, they gave us lunch boxes when no one had them in our school. Our school uniforms were always clean and new. We had a life no one had because they suffered to get us.

Growing up, I had no friend but my brother. We didn’t go anywhere apart. When he had friends, his friends automatically became my friends. I didn’t have any because I didn’t vibe so well with girls like me. I liked the games boys played, so I always played with them.

And then we went to SHS. My parents decided it was a good idea for us to go to different schools to experience different stories and make new friends of our own and not share them. I went to a girls’ school, but my brother went to a mixed school. I found Diana. For the first time in my life, I had a friend I didn’t share with my brother, and she was also a girl—something I’d never had.

By the time we were entering our third year, Diana and I realized what we shared was more than friendship. It was friendship spiced with feelings, the silent kind of feelings. The one that comes with silent whispers. So we kissed one day, and she told me she loved me more than a friend. I said the same thing to her, but we kept what we had a secret.

We were scared. Eyes were watching. Rumors swelled that we were something, something more than friends so we were careful. When we completed school, our hearts broke into pieces because we knew that was the end of it. She came from the North, and I from the South. It was hard to meet again to practice what we had.

The stories I told my brother, I left Diana out of them. I told him everything, but I was scared to talk about Diana. I was scared emotions would leak, and I would mistakenly tell him who we really were.

Second year at the university, and my brother called me. He was scared. He was panting on the phone. He asked me if I was in the hostel, and I said yes. Minutes later, he was with me. He said, “I’m dead.” I said, “No, you’re alive. You’re talking to me.”

I’d never seen him that scared until that day. It took him courage to tell me what the problem was. “My roommate caught me in the act,” he said. I still didn’t get what the problem was because guys don’t have problems seeing their friends getting intimate. I asked him, “Ahuh, so what’s the issue?”

“I was doing it with another guy. That’s the problem. I’m dead. It would be all over campus. I’m dead.”

I didn’t know what to say or do. Apart from the shock from the news he gave me, I was also dealing with the shock of my own. That the two of us would travel opposite lines to fall in love. My twin brother liked men. I liked women. “What kind of twisted symphony is that?” I asked myself.

He spent the day with me, talking to his roommate on the phone, begging and promising even the things he couldn’t give. I took the phone. I told the guy, “Please, spare my brother. He’s shaking. He’s full of regrets as I speak. I beg you, spare him.” He responded, “I’m even surprised he’s behaving this way. Yeah, it didn’t sit well with me, but what would I gain from spreading it?”

The matter died. They paid the guy to buy his utmost silence. When the issue finally died off, I told him, “We have a problem. Something in us was switched at birth. That’s the only explanation I can give. You love men. I love women. Who wrote this script?”

I told him about Diana. He told me about Kobby, his first love. I told him about Abena, the woman I was with. He told me about Philip, the guy he was caught with. He said, “We have a problem.” I responded, “Mom and Dad would collapse if they get to know this.”

The campus issue shook him to the core, so he didn’t attempt it again, though he said he was talking to some men. Before we left campus, I caught Abena double-dating. She wanted me in a trio relationship, but I’m not that kind of woman, so I left her with my heart breaking.

Currently, we are both home, pretending to be the children our parents knew, but we know each other better than they can possibly know. I’m fighting the urge. I try to tell myself that I’m not that girl. I’ve become a church girl, trying to cure my urge with prayers or sing who I am away on the altar every Sunday. I still like women, and I’m secretly in love with some of the women around me.

She Would Introduce Me To Rich Men Who’ll Give Me Money

My brother doesn’t care. He has settled. He has dreams of traveling outside the country to where he can fall in love without judgment or where he can hang his love story in the sky like the rainbow after the rain shower. I don’t judge him. We are twins, but we are allowed to fight different battles, and that’s exactly what we are doing. If the answer to the question in Jeremiah 32:27 is “No,” then I pray God to do a thing in me.