Twins and depression

i feel pretty low today, this has been playing on my mind for a while and ive gotten to the stage where i need to reach out and see if anyone else feels the same way that I do.

I'm trying to find out if there are any other twins out there who suffer from depression where there twin does not, and if you think your being a twin has played a part in it for you?

I am a non identical twin (the younger twin and also a middle child if that has any bearing on anything?) My twin has always been popular and outgoing and generally had a wonderful stress free life, she is very much the dominant twin and has always been very bossy and snappy with me.
I'm told that when we were little we were very close, but all i can ever remember is conflict and feeling like her shadow. In school she always found social interactions easy but after being pushed down and treated like a lesser being (which ive come to realise is unintentional) by her i was on the opposite end of the social spectrum. awkward, lacking in confidence and clumsy to boot i was bullied fairly badly all through high school, even being pushed down two sets of stairs. i wanted to be able to look to my twin for support and to spend time with her but she avoided me wherever she could.somehow i ended up with a couple of so called friends who also treated me like a pull along toy, only wanting to 'hang out' to laugh at my expense and dropping me like a sack of spuds when they got bored of that.

My twin is I'm sure also the favourite in the family thanks to having better social skills.I sound so whiney but getting this off my chest after so many years feels like such a relief!

she also very frequently 'drops me'now were older. Any time she arranges to meet i get excited about spending a bit of time together (especially this last year as I have been battling cervical cancer and company makes things seem brighter) but she always drops out at the last minute.Always with a lame excuse.

Shes also very lucky, always having a good well paid job and having settled down with the man of her dreams, shes even being given the money to buy her first house by his parents. I'm happy for her that things are working out but it seems such a stark contrast to my existence... Battling depression, anxiety and cancer, out of work thanks to illness and still to this day totally socially awkward. I have a wonderful boyfriend who sees how down i get about being constantly let down by her and tries to comfort me, and who's supporting me at the moment. But I hate that we have to work so hard to get by (he works every hour he can as well as doing a degree) where as life hands her everything on a plate.

I know i shouldn't compare myself to her but its hard not to as a twin...

In fact, in the majority of cases only one twin suffers depression.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16390897

It's really hard not to compare yourself to siblings. I imagine it's that much harder if you're a twin.

I know a ton of twins - we actually had three sets of twins in the last office I worked in, and there were at least a dozen sets of twins at my high school for some reason. I've noticed that one is almost always more outgoing than the other, and often does the talking for both of them. I don't know the psychology behind it, but I wanted to let you know it's pretty common.

Maybe you should talk to her about how you feel when she makes plans with you and then begs off with a lame excuse. That seems like a horrible thing to do to someone who is battling cancer but maybe she doesn't realize what she's doing. Maybe she's just kind of thoughtless.

Thank you for taking the time to reply, it means a lot.

I thought id read a study on it before but I couldn't find it again when I looked, I think it was done using identical twins only too? I'm sure identical and non identical twins must deal with the same issues other than the looking identical part obviously!

It is difficult not to draw comparisons when you've grow up with someone from the second you were born, because there's never a break for you to develop on your own, so you can end up obsessing on the differences between how people interact with you and your twin.

I honestly don't think she realises that shes so consistent with her backing out of meeting up, i once tried to talk to her about it and somehow the conversation blew up into her crying her eyes out saying that shed always been jealous of me because I'm prettier and she wants to be me (I'm not prettier at all, I'm not sure where that came from!) I'm loathe to talk to her again in case I upset her. I think on some level she must know its upsetting when she puts off catching up, i wonder whether she knows she treated me badly when we were children and she has underlying guilt she doesn't want yo deal with...