Coping with feeling useless and inferior to twin

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Hi. I am a 17 year old girl with a twin brother.

Ever since we were young, he always impressed. He had an extraordinary memory and an unusual fascination with math. He has always been about two years ahead of his grade level. In addition, he writes above average, has high reading comprehension, good test-taking skills, and can balance multiple aspects of his life at once. People routinely would tell him how smart he was in front of me. I was always stupid.

I had only high reading comprehension when I was young. I did and do hate doing complex raw calculations... It's not that it's harder, but I'm slow at it somehow, and I just get a feeling of panic while doing it. When I was young, I had severe math anxiety and had a remedial math class with the same woman who was always praising my brother's math skills. In addition, we did "mad minutes" in math class, which I hated due to my attention deficit, poor motor skills, and slow reaction time always making me come in last.

I was told that I was good at reading and writing, and when I was diagnosed with Asperger's in 5th grade, my IEP said that reading was my favorite class activity. This would haunt me for a long time, but enough of that.

I didn't pay attention in math class come middle school. I couldn't. In addition, I refused to do math functions that they didn't explain in terms of why we did them that way unless I was forced. My grades in math continued to be poor. Reading for me was a way to escape from social issues and social interaction itself.

7th grade was in a different school. I tested into gifted reading after panicking on the first page of the math test. My brother tested into both.

Now, 11th grade. I was tricked into taking a normal math class by my counselor instead of the advanced math class, even though in 10th grade coming to my new school, my grades had been good. I actually like my math class now, trig. The calculations are simple, you have to figure out what simple calculations to do and how to visualize it. My brother is in calculus with a bunch of other "gifted" eleventh graders and twelfth graders. I tried to do a science competition, I lost my resources for the test and neither of my teammates had studied at all. I won no medals, he won two. People kept joking about how smart he was. He is taking all AP classes. I am only taking one, he is doing better in it than me. His SATs were higher than mine, because I panic during tests. He is doing competitive choir, got a part in the musical, and won third place in mathletes.

I don't find English to be as core as math. Law can make something legal, business can make something accessible, but only STEM can make the once impossible possible. I did well in science, but not as well as my classmates because I never can pay attention and keep losing things.

My counselors say to focus on how well I can write. "Can your brother write that well?" I am not comforted because of the above and because I got a 2/6 on my Apush midterm essay and average scores on my English essays, and in addition because my brother can write very well.

I can invent things, criticize arguments and research, come up with new theories, ask good questions, solve puzzles when no one's watching, and comment of philosophy, but none of this under pressure, which means it can't be standardized or quantified. I'm an educational legislator's worst nightmare. I know I have easy fatigue, attention issues, a slow reaction time, test anxiety, bad memory, bad organization, and poor motor skills. In addition, I have Asperger's and depression, so my morale is often low. My special interests are never lucrative, nor are they romantic things of genius. All in all, I could be as smart as my brother, our close associates think I am, but this cannot be proven. Maybe they are being condescending.

I go through the school as the "stupid one". My brother is socially awkward too, but he is "eccentric genius socially awkward", I am simply "awkward" and "creepy". Kids say they love him, no one says they love me.

I honestly have considered suicide multiple times, even thinking about how I would go about it, because I am sick of being the stupid one. Maybe if I died, they'd think, "that's the girl who killed herself", not, "that's the stupid one".

I need relief. I need a solution. I need to pick up a skill or something and be his equal, but I simply cannot manage it all. I don't know what to do.

PS: I love him more than anything, I was never angry at him, and he has never been arrogant about his accomplishments, he says he is worried about me, but he and the rest of my family get angry when I bring up my feelings.

I can totally relate. I have a 13 year old brother who has skipped a few grades and is taking college classes, and meanwhile I am failing high school and I won't be graduating with my peers. He has a few autistic traits but it's not really disabling for him, in fact they seem to be mostly helpful. He is a bit socially awkward but he doesn't care to socialize much anyway and he can make friends just fine when he wants to.

He seems to be successful at everything he does. He has made thousands of dollars in the stock market, he wins at least 90% of games he plays, he is incredibly organized and always on top of things, he knows how to play the system very well, and he will have a Bachelors degree at age 16. Meanwhile I'm his mentally disabled brother with autism and ADD who has taken a few special ed classes, needed some special accommodations, and still won't be graduating normally. I am proud of him though and we have a great relationship.

I've mostly stopped caring what people think of me at this point. It's not like I don't have a reason for being the way I am, and if people are going to judge me for that before getting to know me then I don't want them in my life anyway. The only person worth comparing yourself to is your past self, and if you are better then them then you are doing something right. Einstein once said "Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid", and it seems that you are doing that to yourself. Our brothers may have strengths that society cares more about, but everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses and just because society doesn't see them doesn't mean that they are not there. Society has a very bad track record of judging people accurately, so you really have no reason to trust it's judgements about you. It seems like you already have some good skills, it's just that you are a hard time proving that to society. You don't have to prove anything to them.

While I'm sharing quotes, here is another one that I really like: "I have never met a good person with an easy past" -Atticus (To Kill a Mockingbird).

Thank you.

But... I can't deal with being stupider on paper. I "sound smart" to a lot of adults. No peer has called me smart.

He got three awards today. One was for excelling in information technology.... He's literally never programmed anything in his life, he briefly wanted to research computers and build one two years ago, he didn't, he hasn't been into IT since. I don't think they have record of him doing anything remotely IT related....He's not into IT.

I got no awards. I'm stupid, and I almost pushed an upper floor window open today... I don't know what I was doing or if i was serious, I was contemplating jumping off.

I can't just be the stupid one anymore.

Aw, feels. To quote the gay saying: It gets better.

I have a twin brother. We were both about on par with each other in terms of grades and things. We did study some different things & had different interests here and there. But I get the sort of inherent competition that exists between twins. There are some things he did better than me, and some things I did better than him - it's just the way it is.

The gap wasn't so apparent and difficult to deal with until much later than high school when my ASD & other symptoms got really bad in my late 20's. It was extremely frustrating because he was able to work and have an independent life while I wasn't well and couldn't work or function in life. He was healthier, more productive, had a lot more money than me, much more of a social life, independence etc. Man o man that was frustrating.

But then a few years ago I met the right people at the right time and did a lot of reading/learning/research and figured out how to successfully treat my symptoms. I've since done a lot of hard work on myself. Now I'm a lot more physically fit than he is, back to work and life, live a balanced social life & have to decline a lot of work and social opportunities that I don't have time for, and have more money than he does. Also, I've been successful enough at treating my symptoms that I'm now a lot closer to being NTish than he is and his untreated symptoms (that he refuses to acknowledge because they never got so bad for him so as to be life destroying like it was for me) are obvious to me when I see him. However, they don't prevent him from living a normal-ish life so he has no interest in learning anything about them or how to treat them as I have.

If you'd care to chat about the things I've learned and done feel free to get in touch via pm and I'd be more than happy to share my story as I've done the last few years.

Oh, and one last thing re: suicidal thoughts (which I remember having during high school times.. but now haven't had for a few years) I saw this image on Facebook last night & just wanted to share it here because it's one of those things that just really hits ya right in the feels and I think spreads a very positive & valuable message:



As for the whole twin comparison thing.. at 33 years old I'm healthier and wealthier, but he has a longer term more stable career going and a girlfriend of a couple years than he now lives with. The only competition we have between each other is friendly competition that's very healthy - encouraging each other to be healthier, fitter, smarter, wealthier etc vs. trying to one up or be better than the other in any capacity. I think that's just the nature of maturing, too. You stop being so petty and comparing and get a more balanced sense of yourself vs. your siblings, friends, and peers.

I have been called smart by peers a few times, but that's only because I can sometimes be a bit of a showoff with my Rubik's Cube solving skills (which are by no means natural, I had to practice for years) and I know a lot about my special interest (space travel) so I can impress people by using jargon. I did that kind of thing because it was the closest I could ever get to being popular, I have since stopped going out of my way to show off those skills and people have stopped calling me smart. Meanwhile I have heard my brother described as "an actual legitimate genius" by his peers. My point is that people's perceptions of you are often very shallow, and they by no means define or even accurately describe you. My brother is a genius according to the arbitrary and often quite ableist standards of society, but that doesn't make him intrinsically smarter or better then anyone else when you consider the things that society does not see, and the same is true for your brother. You are more then just the photons you diffuse and the sound waves you produce, it takes time to get to know someone and the vast majority of the people you meet will never know you very well.


This really does go to show how arbitrary and flawed society's standards can me. My brother recently got an award for being the top student in his computer class and I failed that same class, he is rather good with computers and all but he almost always calls me for help when he has a computer problem. This is because my skill set does not include the ability to easily pass a class like he can but if I hyper-focus on a computer problem then it's only a matter of time until it's fixed and that's something that he can't do as well as I can.


You not getting any awards had nothing to do with your perceived alleged stupidity, the fault is society's. The only person worth comparing yourself to is the person you were yesterday, and if you can manage to be better then them then you are doing something right. If you compare yourself with others then you will tend to only see the things that they are better at then you and it just causes you to feel worse about yourself. This is true for everyone, not just people with disabilities and impairments. The truth is you are an amazing person, and if society refuses to see it then it's their loss.