A fictional autobiography of conjoined twin sisters Lily and Rose, in which they describe navigating life and romance in a non-conjoined world.
Mature themes in Part 1 include passing mentions of masturbation, girl-on-girl kissing and breast play, heavy petting, genitals, and gigantomastia (extremely large breasts).
Part 1 includes the following chapters:
Chapter 1: Introduction
Hello, we are Lily and Rose Barrett, identical twin sisters, and this is our life story, at least so far. Yes, ‘story’ in the singular. We’re very close, and we do everything together. In fact, we’re literally inseparable. You see, we share a single body. We’re conjoined twins, commonly but incorrectly known as Siamese twins. Specifically, we’re dicephalic parapagus twins, which means that we each have a distinct head and neck, with two spines inside a single torso. Together we have a total of two arms and two legs. Oh, and two breasts, since you were probably wondering about that.
First, let’s explain how we refer to ourselves. We like to call each other our bodymates, just like people sharing a dorm room or apartment are called roommates. Normal twins might call each other their womb mates, and people refer to dog or cat siblings from the same litter as litter mates. We’re all of those things, of course, but we take it to the next level – bodymates, since we inhabit a single body. We should also mention that we sometimes call non-conjoined people ‘singletons’, either referring to individuals or to non-conjoined society in general. It may sound like a slur, and really, in the context that we use it, it kind of is.
When we’re talking about something we both experienced or both agree on, we’ll speak in the plural – using pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ or using both of our names together. When we’re speaking from the perspective of only one of us, we’ll use only that twin’s name and singular pronouns – ‘I’ and ‘me’, or ‘she’ and ‘her’ depending on who’s doing the talking. We hope that won’t be too confusing. We want others to refer to us in the plural as well, as ‘they’ and ‘them’, unless they’re referring to only one of us.
We have individual brains, so we can’t read each other’s minds or communicate telepathically. But it almost doesn’t matter, because we almost always instinctively know what the other is thinking and anticipate each other’s movements.
Our first initials were not randomly chosen. If you’re facing us, Lily is on your left and Rose is on your right. From our perspective, though, our initials are backwards. Rose occupies the left side of our body, while Lily occupies the right. That’s what happens when your names are chosen by singletons. We know it can be confusing, so we often wear hair accessories or jewelry or even corsages that feature our respective flowers, especially when we know we’ll be meeting new people.
Practically everything we do requires a high level of cooperation and coordination. To walk, we have to shift our weight to one side or the other, then one of us moves her leg forward, then the other moves her leg forward, then the first moves her leg forward, and so on. Between each step we have to shift our weight from one twin’s leg to the other. To sit, we each have to bend our knee and shift our weight backwards at the same time. Any activity that requires two hands has to be similarly coordinated. But we’ve had to do this our entire lives, and it feels natural to us. People tell us our movements appear seamless and normal and even graceful. The only times they don’t are when we’re trying to do something for the first time, or if we disagree about something such as which direction to go in.
If we want to do different things or go different places, we almost always have to either compromise or take turns. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen very often, as we nearly always see eye-to-eye.
Sharing a body makes us a living paradox. Legally, we’re two distinct people, and we think of ourselves that way and want others to think of us that way, but we realize for most practical purposes we’re one physical being. We’re often are called things like ‘the girl with two heads’, and while we understand that’s what we look like, we find terms like that to be offensive. We are two girls in a single, shared body.
Giving birth to conjoined twins is quite rare – less common than normal triplets, but more common than normal quadruplets. But it’s far more rare to actually encounter conjoined twins in real life. Sadly, the large majority are stillborn or die shortly after birth. Of those that survive, in some cases they can be easily separated surgically and go on to lead normal, separate lives. In other cases, one twin is sacrificed so the other can live. Whether conjoined twins can be successfully separated depends on a lot of things, but it essentially boils down to how complete each of their bodies are. The fewer body parts they share, and the less important those shared body parts are to survival, is what matters. In our case, there was no way even one of us could have survived if we were separated.
Chapter 2: Childhood
When our mother was pregnant with us, a routine ultrasound revealed that we were conjoined. To her credit, she chose to carry us to term, even knowing the survival rate was poor. With two heads, there was no way we could be born naturally, so we were delivered by caesarean section. Obviously, we beat the odds and were healthy from the very beginning.
Our parents tell us it took us a lot longer than most babies to do things like roll over, sit up, crawl, stand, and walk. Not because we were developmentally delayed, but simply because we’re top heavy, having two heads on one body, and we have to coordinate all of our movements. But they worked with us to teach us how to do those things, and we caught on with time and practice. Before long, we were unstoppable.
We had a pretty normal, happy experience as preschoolers. We realized we were different from everyone else, but really didn’t give it much thought. Our parents and our older brother loved us and treated us what seemed to us to be no different than anyone else. After a few years, we also had a baby sister.
It wasn’t until we started elementary school that we began to realize just how different we really were, that not everyone reacted well to us, and that life for us wasn’t always going to be sunshine and flowers. The school tried to prepare their staff, parents, and students for our arrival. They sent a letter to parents of all children attending the school to explain us and to request that the parents prepare their children and coach them on how they should react to us and treat us. They asked our parents to keep us home on the first day of school, so they could meet with each class, especially the one we’d be part of, on the same things.
But despite those preparations, on our first day of school, everyone else’s second, we saw them all staring at us, and it was intimidating, scary even. We heard them calling us words we didn’t know, like ‘freak’, but we understood from the context that those words were meant to be insulting. Fortunately, the school had spent quite a bit of time working with our own classmates to try to minimize that kind of thing, and as kindergartners, they weren’t as inclined to do it as the older kids were. They had also hand-picked our teacher, knowing that she would treat us kindly and as individuals and not tolerate behavior to the contrary, and even most of the other teachers in the school treated us well and stopped anyone from bothering us as much as they could. The other kids were curious about us, though, and asked lots of questions at first, but we didn’t mind that.
As time went on, the students and other people at the school became used to us, and for the most part accepted us. On the occasions when someone would do or say something that upset us, our classmates were quick to come to our defense. Usually the culprit would be someone who had recently transferred to the school, but they quickly learned that we were off limits for any bullying or tormenting. We became comfortable and happy going to school, and made some really great friends there.
At school we were each expected to do our own work, but in reality we collaborated on just about everything we did when the teachers weren’t looking. When it was time to take a quiz or a test, however, the teacher would put up a specially-made partition between us so that we couldn’t see each other or each other’s paper. We both hated that partition with a passion. It was actually traumatizing at first, not being able to see each other. We each felt so utterly alone. We gradually got used to it, but we still hated it.
Only later did we realize that that aloneness is what singletons experience all the time, every day. Despite the occasional inconveniences and difficulties, that partition actually made us appreciate, even grateful, that we’re conjoined. Except for the times the partition was between us, neither of us ever feels alone, and that’s a good thing. We each always have our best friend literally connected to us, 24/7.
Chapter 3: Adolescence
As we reached adolescence, we found ourselves more and more out of our comfort zone and having to deal with new situations. One such new situation was starting middle school. Multiple elementary schools fed into the one middle school, so the majority of students there had never seen us before. We had to deal with the stares and insults and abuse like never before. Kids at that age can be especially cruel towards anyone different, and we certainly fit that bill. The teachers were much less able to keep a lid on that kind of behavior, too, as much of it happened in the hallways between classes. Often, kids from our own elementary school would come to our defense, but they weren’t always around.
Another change, certainly not unique to us, was reaching puberty. In our case, though, we each not only had our own breast to get used to, but also our sister’s breast within ready reach. We discovered that it was arousing to each of us when our twin caressed our breast. This led us to explore masturbation by stimulating our shared genitals, which we could both simultaneously feel. That’s right; there’s a narrow strip down the middle of our body where our nerve endings overlap and we can both feel. This includes our lady parts. We began masturbating at least daily and sometimes more often. And we discovered that while caressing each other’s breasts and/or masturbating, we very much enjoyed passionately kissing each other at the same time. When we were alone, we’d sometimes even kiss that way even when we weren’t trying to pleasure ourselves.
If anyone saw us, it would look very much like we were making out with each other, and that’s exactly the way it seemed to us. Doing those kinds of things with our own sister seemed incestuous and made us feel guilty at first, but it just isn’t possible for one of us to pleasure ourselves without also pleasuring our sister at the same time. After a while, we decided that the taboos of singletons simply don’t apply to us, and we stopped feeling guilty about it and just enjoyed it. It was another reason for us to be glad we’re conjoined.
Despite all of that, we weren’t, and aren’t, lesbian or even bi-sexual. We became interested in boys during that same period in our lives, and we’ve never wavered from that. When we were young and fairly innocent, we’d go on double dates with boys. One of them would focus his attention on Lily, and the other on Rose. It always had to be a double date, though. Neither of us would ever agree to a date if our twin didn’t also have one. We especially liked the few double dates we had with identical twin boys. With them, there was no reason to think one of us had gotten a better deal than the other. Anyway, double dates were fine when we were only holding hands and kissing and even on a few occasions, letting our dates touch our breasts.
We suppose we should mention that we really blossomed when we reached puberty and became quite beautiful. We think so, anyway, but lots of people, male and female, old and young, also tell us the same thing. We’re symmetrical and complementary and aesthetically pleasing in appearance; we look like we were intentionally designed to be conjoined. As a result, we’ve never lacked for boys being interested in us. Sure, some are weirded out by us, but there are plenty of them who aren’t, and who find us fascinating. We turn boys’ heads wherever we go.
As we grew older and the petting moved below the waist, things started to get weird for us, as well as for our dates, and we quickly put a stop to letting them do that. Since then, we were never able to completely resolve whether we preferred to share a single man or each have our own. More about that later.
Starting in middle school and continuing in high school, we discovered that we excel at running, and joined the track team. Most sports are challenging for us, because they require a higher level of coordination between left and right limbs than we can achieve. Basketball, for instance, or soccer. We can play those sports, but we’re not very good at them. Even jumping hurdles is a problem for us. But just plain running, we can do that easily. Also, since between us we have two hearts and four lungs, but only one body and one pair of legs to move, we think we probably have an advantage over singletons.
This is where we began to first have problems over the question of whether we’re one person or two people. We can reason with human beings about that, but we can’t reason with inflexible procedures and computers that enforce those procedures. We’re in the school district computer as two different people, each with our own student ID number, just like any normal pair of twins. Sometimes the computer would assign us to different classes meeting at the same time, but we could always get a school counselor to override that for us.
But it became a problem for the track coach when she tried to schedule us to compete at track meets and sign us up to compete in specific events. She’d have to enter our student IDs, and the computer would verify that we were enrolled at the school we were competing for that we were eligible to compete based on our grades, and so on. But depending on the meet and event, there were sometimes limits on how many athletes from each school could compete in a given event. If she entered both of us, it would assign us two different bib numbers and two different running lanes, and take a slot away from another team member.
Also, if we’d win or place at the event, it would record us as being tied. For example, if we won, it would show us as being tied for first place. We’d get two first place ribbons or medals or whatever, which seemed redundant. But that also meant the computer wouldn’t recognize there being a second place finisher. Whoever came in second would be awarded third place, and whoever came in third would get nothing. Nobody thought that was fair, including us.
The meet officials didn’t want us to wear two bib numbers, and we obviously couldn’t run in two different lanes. But they didn’t want the coach to only sign one of us up for the event, and neither the coach nor we wanted that, either. We both wanted to be recognized for our participation and contribution. There seemed to be no solution to these problems and no end to the headaches at every single track meet. It got to be pretty discouraging; all we wanted to do is run.
But this was just the beginning of these kinds of problems for us; we continue to have them to this very day. Another example was when we took the driving test to get our driver’s licenses. We had to do the driving test two times, but not because we failed the first time. We had to show that we could safely operate a vehicle once for Lily and a second time for Rose, despite the fact that we can only drive by working together as a team.
As high school neared completion, we needed to figure out what we wanted to do with our life. Whatever it ended up being, the two of us would have to be in agreement about it, because we’d be doing it together, just like everything we’d ever done. The first question was, Did we want to go to college or get a job after high school? The honest answer was neither, really, but we knew that wasn’t going to fly with our parents.
We really weren’t crazy about going to a new campus full of strangers who would have to adjust to seeing two girls sharing a body. Besides, we had no idea what we might major in, so how could we even know what college was the right one? But most jobs for people just out of high school involve working with the public, and that would be just as bad, if not worse. Would an employer even want us serving their customers? They’d probably be afraid we’d scare them away. Was there a job out there where we’d actually have an advantage, having two brains and two sets of eyes and ears? These were big questions for a couple of naïve 16 or 17 year olds.
This was the first time in our lives that the two of us ever had what we’d consider to be a serious disagreement. I, Rose, thought we should go to college and take general classes while we figured out what to major in. Perhaps just go to the local community college, so that once we did decide on a major, we could transfer to a school that actually offered that major. But I, Lily, thought we should take a gap year and work while we decided what we wanted to do. I wasn’t convinced I wanted to go to college at all. Obviously we would have to reach a consensus between these two incompatible options.
We discussed this with our family. Our parents were of the opinion that we should hold off going to college if we weren’t sure about it. That would be great advice for a singleton, but not for us, since one of us did want to go and the other had reservations. They just shrugged and told us we’d have to work it out between ourselves. Our brother Will suggested a third option – joining the military. He said lots of people just out of high school did that if they weren’t sure about college. We both just laughed at that suggestion – could you imagine the military actually accepting conjoined twins? We couldn’t.
Our little sister Daisy suggested that we’d fit in with goth culture; that goths would eagerly welcome and accept conjoined twins into their midst. They had a fascination with things others would consider freakish. She thought we should get a job at a goth club or a goth clothing store. The thing is, we’re just not into that lifestyle at all. But that led them to start brainstorming. What about working at a haunted house? You’d be a big hit!, said Will. What about working at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum. People go there to see odd and unusual things, suggested Daisy.
We were beginning to take offense to this line of reasoning, and we would have already if it had come from anyone else. Why don’t we just join the circus and become their headline sideshow?, said Rose sarcastically. I can’t believe you two are suggesting this kind of stuff, she said. You know we don’t like to be thought of as freaks, so why would we want to work somewhere where that’s exactly what we would be? And I, Lily, completely agreed.
Once alone, the two of us discussed this further. I, Rose, said, “I’m more upset at what those two suggested the more I think about it. I couldn’t tell if they were kidding or not, but it doesn’t matter. This is exactly why I want to go to college. I don’t want to be the token freak or some kind of novelty to be exploited. I want us to be taken seriously, to be respected. I want us to get an education and a professional job and develop an expertise in something where we’re sought after for what we know or can do.
“Imagine if we’re on television someday, not because we’re a two-headed curiosity, but because we’re experts in our field or we hold some important position. That’s what I want for our future. I can’t see us getting there if we blow off college and just get a job somewhere, either at a freak show or even just some regular job.”
Then I, Lily, responded. “I have no intention of taking any job where they’re hiring us because we’re conjoined, unless it gives us some natural advantage like when we run track. I don’t know what kind of job would be like that. But I’m with you; I refuse to be anyone’s freak attraction. I’m not against getting an education; I’m just not thrilled about becoming the campus freaks just by merely existing and being there. I’d much rather toil in anonymity in some back room somewhere where we only have to interact with a few people.”
Then Rose said to me, “I respect your feelings, bodymate. I really do.” I replied, “And I respect yours as well, Lefty.” Rose asked, “So what are we going to do?” And neither of us had an answer, and so we just sat in silence for a while as our two brains contemplated this dilemma.
After a while I, Rose, said, “I would be okay with taking a break from school for a semester or two, provided that we definitely start college after that, both of us wholehearted and enthusiastic about it.”
Then I, Lily said, “I would be okay with going to college, provided it’s a small one; maybe even one that admits only women. I think boys might be too much of a distraction for us.”
Then Rose, with a tear running down her cheek and very emotional, said to me, “Thank you, Lily. I hate it when we disagree. I can’t imagine what would become of us if we couldn’t work things out.” And she reached across and put her hand on my shoulder, which is the best we can do trying to hug each other, and turned her head toward me for a long, passionate kiss. After discussing it further, we agreed to start college right away, rather than taking a gap semester or year.
Chapter 4: College
To get into college, we had to go through the usual aggravations that are just a part of life for us. We had to make sure the people administering the SAT exam knew ahead of time that we’re conjoined, so there wouldn’t be a scene on the morning of the exam when they didn’t know what to do with us. We explained that we would bring the partition we used to take school tests, which satisfied them.
We had to separately apply to each college, each time paying the application fee, filling out the lengthy form, and in most cases writing the required essay. What were they going to do, accept one of us and not the other? We’re a package deal. We knew we wouldn’t each get a full salary when we started working, so why did we each have to pay the full fees for stuff like this?
We were offered admission at at several colleges, but decided to accept the offer from Capital Women’s College. They were the only ones to waive half of each of our tuition, acknowledging that not doing that was inherently unfair to us. On top of that, they’d cover the remainder of our tuition with diversity scholarships, which they offered to unusual students of all kinds. Capital College seemed to really understand our unique circumstances, and wanted us because of, not despite, our uniqueness.
At freshman orientation, they made a big deal about diversity, telling us that the college seeks a diverse student body and welcomes and accommodates all women, and that they expected each of us to do likewise. They stressed that we all had much to learn from each other and that we should take advantage of the opportunity to learn the perspectives of women different than ourselves. After that, it seemed that everyone wanted to be our friend and hear our story. We weren’t freaks, we were celebrities. We already knew we were going to love being students at Capital.
At any other college, we probably would have had a two-bed dorm room to ourselves, because their computer would have assigned the two of us to the room and thought it was full. But Capital was too on the ball to let that happen. Our roommate was a girl named Gabrielle Vernon, who goes by Gabi for short. Gabi’s father is a civil rights attorney and a state senator, and Gabi’s contribution to school diversity was that she’s African-American, not that it matters.
Like most singletons who come into our life, Gabi had a million questions for us, and was fascinated watching us move and perform everyday tasks. Her favorite thing to say to us was, “You guys are so cute!” That may sound demeaning, but the way she said it, it didn’t seem like it to us. She quickly took a liking to us, and the feeling was mutual. Most likely due to her background, Gabi proved to be a powerful ally. She was always quick to come to our defense and make a fuss if she thought we weren’t being treated fairly due to being conjoined.
It turned out that Gabi was also on her high school’s track team, so we had that in common. Of course, she was very surprised that not only could we run, we were quite good at it. We immediately became running partners with her, which took care of the concern that we had had about running alone. Well, as alone as we can be, anyway. Then the three of us decided to try out for the college’s track team, and we all made the team. Being a small college, they weren’t as dependent on computers as our high school was, and so there were no problems entering us into events using both of our names. The meet officials always questioned why two people were assigned the same bib number and the same lane, but as soon as they saw us they understood.
As freshmen, we mostly took the required, general classes like English and math and history. We also tried a few classes in subjects that we thought were possible majors, but nothing really jumped out at us. Gabi, on the other hand, knew exactly what she wanted to do. She was going to be a lawyer like her father and older sister. Law school doesn’t require a specific undergraduate major, but early on she decided it would be political science.
[Author's note: Cassie is a crossover character from the final chapter of my Giga Girl story.]
Cassie was another girl we became friends with there. There was no shortage of students who were physically unusual in some way – dwarfs, girls in wheelchairs, girls with missing limbs, and so on. But you see people like that in public from time to time. Cassie, however, was almost as unique as we were, or so it seemed. She carried around a pair of absolutely massive breasts, as big as beach balls, we’d say. She said her condition was called gigantomastia. She was from somewhere in the Midwest, but had specifically chosen Capital College because she knew other women with gigantomastia who had attended and graduated from Capital and had had good experiences here. She knew this from being in some kind of gigantomastia support group.
We were surprised to learn there were others like her, enough of them to form a support group, and that somehow they had found each other. Franky, we were a bit envious of that. Occasionally we’d see her with one or two other women who weren’t students but who also had gigantomastia, and then in our junior and senior years she knew and spent time with an underclassman who had gigantomastia. But she said she also understood what we were going through, never having ever met anyone else like ourselves; she had felt that way, too, from the start of puberty until she was 15 years old and her parents learned of the support group.
So, the whole college experience went pretty well for us, certainly a lot better than it would have gone just about anywhere else. With Capital’s emphasis not just on diversity, but on every student getting the most out of being in a diverse setting, the other students really went out of their way to be friendly to us and get to know us. I, Lily, was really glad Rose pushed me to go to college. I, Rose, was really glad Lily insisted on a small, women’s college. We both were, and are, glad we have each other to talk things through, because we make the best decisions when we do that. We make a great team!
One question it seemed like we were constantly being asked was whether we’d be able to have children. Since we share a complete, normal reproductive system, there’s no reason to believe that we couldn’t. The follow-up question is almost always whether our children would also be conjoined. We find that amusing, because our DNA is completely normal, and so it’s virtually guaranteed that we’ll have normal children. We came from a single, normal embryo just like all identical twins, but in our case it just failed to completely divide in two. There’s nothing genetic or hereditary about that.
Another question that seemed to always come up was whether we dated one man or two; in other words, whether we both dated the same man at the same time, or we each dated different men. So far, we’d always gone out with different men, always on double dates. One would give his attention to Lily and the other to Rose. But that was because we had only casually dated. Holding hands and kissing worked best when we each had our own guy.
However, since we share a single set of genitals and reproductive organs, and we can both feel everything that goes on down there, we knew that we would need a different strategy for more serious relationships where sex was on the table, including marriage. Would two men be willing to share us below the waist? Would we want two guys, both our own guy and our sister’s guy, to pound us both? Probably not to the first question, and definitely not to the second. But we weren’t exactly comfortable with being in a threesome with one guy above the waist, either. This dilemma had a lot to do with why we’d never yet been in a serious relationship.
If only we could find a set of male twins conjoined the same way we are, that would have been the perfect solution. But if conjoined girls are as rare as unicorns, conjoined boys are as rare as flying unicorns. For reasons no one can explain, about 70 percent of all cases of conjoined twins are female.
We both knew that eventually, we’d need to figure out how to make a threesome work, where one guy was simultaneously in a relationship with both of us. We’d just have to get used to having to take turns kissing him, and taking turns walking side by side with him or sitting next to him.
We talked about this subject quite a bit with Gabi, and what fascinated her more than our personal dilemma were the legal and moral dilemmas. Legally, only one of us could actually marry if we shared a guy. Legally, only one of us could be the mother to any child we had, even though it would be impossible to know which of us were the actual biological mother. The egg would have come from one or the other of our ovaries, but the eggs from each of us are genetically identical. Plus, we would have shared the experience of carrying the baby in our womb and giving birth. Morally, especially from a religious perspective, one man marrying both of us was polygamy, but one many marrying only one of us, or two men each marrying one of us would be adultery assuming sex was involved. Yes, these are the morals of singletons, but we have no choice but to live in their world.
Gabi was all fired up to get her father involved on our behalf, either as a senator to get the laws changed, or as a civil rights lawyer to get a court ruling that would effectively change the laws regarding marriage and legal parenthood. She invited us to go home with her one weekend to introduce us to her father, which we accepted.
At Gabi’s insistence, we explained and discussed our various dilemmas with her father. Of course, the legal dilemma was the one he was most interested in. After we were finished, Gabi said, “So, Dad, do you think you can help them?” knowing of course that if anyone could, it was him.
Mr. Vernon said nothing for a minute or two, but his facial expressions showed he was deep in thought. Finally, he spoke. “You two have a most interesting situation, and I understand and am sympathetic to how the law is unfair to you. But I’ll be completely honest. Hell would freeze over before the state legislature would ever change the relevant laws in your favor. It would be political suicide for anyone to introduce a bill allowing three-way marriage or three legal parents of a child, no matter how compelling the arguments for them might be, or how narrow their scope. The same for anyone who would vote in favor of such a bill. Their political opponents would have a field day crafting misleading attack ads during the next election cycle.
“That leaves the courts to mandate that the laws be changed, but even then, I’d say your chances of that actually happening are perhaps 50-50 at best. Judges have to run for re-election, too. At this point, however, this is all just an academic exercise. You don’t have a legal basis to file suit to change the laws, because you’re not presently being harmed by them. You would have to wait until you were engaged to be married and were actually turned away when you tried to get a three-way marriage license or two marriage licenses both listing the same man. Or until you had a child and were unable to convince the Bureau of Vital Statistics to list both of you as birth mothers on the birth certificate, as the case may be.
“There would be no legal dilemma if you were to each marry a different man. Each child you gave birth to could be DNA tested to determine the biological father, and you could easily get a birth certificate indicating whichever of you is married to that man as the biological mother. There would also be no legal issue if only one of you were to marry. That’s what the conjoined Hensel twins did – Abby married but Brittany didn’t. But I certainly appreciate the quite valid reasons why you would not be willing to do either of those things.”
Gabi was more disappointed to hear this than we were. We’d been dealing with this kind of thing for most of our lives in one way or another. We kept this information in mind for when the time came that we could actually do something about it.
During our sophomore year, we decided to major in sociology, the study of human society, in other words, human behavior, interaction, and organization. We both found the subject interesting based on our own experiences of not really fitting into society’s expectations of how people should look and act.
Gabi’s father arranged for us to work as summer interns at the state legislature between our sophomore and junior years, which helped solidify for us that we wanted to work in government. After that, we added a minor in political science, with the goal of a career in public policy analysis. The following summer, between our junior and senior years, we interned again, this time with the state Human Rights Commission.