Andre the Gunslinger

There are some things in life that are constant. The sun, even on cloudy overcast days (like every day I have spent in Oakland so far), will always rise. The tide, no matter what phase the moon is in, will continue to lap against the shore. The hum of the city just footsteps outside of your window will linger throughout the entire night, only to be replaced by birds when the sky begins to brighten.

Sometimes people are also constants.

You can go weeks, maybe even months, without talking to certain people, and then moments after reconnecting it’s like nothing has changed at all. They’ll still laugh at the phrase “baby snart” or remind you of that one time you stayed up until sunrise on the grayest day of the year, and things fit into place nicely.

Siblings are some of these people.

My sister took me out to dinner a few days before I left home and, while we’re very different at times, it felt like any other sister interaction we’d ever had. It didn’t feel momentous or like the last of something, just another dinner where we spent too much money on delicious food. I spent half of the time talking about drama at camp even though she knew none of the people in my stories, and the other half of the time singing camp songs that were stuck in my head. She had no context for it, yet she never complained.

That’s what sisters do.

What brothers do, however, is wait up until way past midnight for you and your two friends to arrive so they can greet you. Because Luke’s room had air conditioning, he agreed to let me and my friends sleep there the night before my flight. (Strangely kind of him. I think he worships my friends a bit more than he really cares for me.) He had intentionally decorated the walls with weird drawings and hung up this creepy skeleton and then he lingered, trying to insert himself into our conversations.

(Brothers also text you twenty minutes after you make your first blog post, upset that they didn’t get a mention.)

And while his overbearingness the night of our arrival was a bit suffocating, I was the one who couldn’t sleep and ended up lying next to him in the early morning hours, poking him until he was awake, trying to get some sort of conversation going while all he wanted to do was sleep. He let me stay beside him in silence, probably not knowing how anxious I really was to leave my life behind, and didn’t tell me to leave him alone. He let me stay, he kept me talking, and the anxious wires that were alight in my stomach slowly faded away.

I could’ve climbed back into the bed I was sharing with Deanna, stepping over Ben who’d stretched out on the floor, but in that moment I wanted my brother by my side.

There are few things I really know about myself, few things that I never waiver on or question. The biggest, most important, is that my siblings are the most important people in the world to me. I can imagine my sister reading this at one point in the future and being shocked, seeing as we don’t talk much unless I’m begging her to buy me something from Amazon Prime, but I mean it.

Ashlyn and Luke are probably the two most important people in the world to me, and thinking about spending a year away from them makes it feel like someone’s stuck a knife into my throat.

Luke’s a little bit harder. He’s younger (though he’s way taller) and in so many ways, he feels like my responsibility. Eight years of age difference kind of meant that I was the one always cooking the meals (mac and cheese) when no one else would or I had to convince him to not sleep on the couch but rather in his bedroom or that, hey, some things just aren’t okay to say and you should really watch what’s coming out of your mouth.

I’m the Obnoxious Liberal Child in my family. Who else is going to shit talk Trump while instilling my brother with feminist ideals if I’m not there? For the love of God, give him something other to do than play video games and go hunting.

In leaving behind the familiarity, I have to adapt to new constants.

New constants will be standing early in the morning waiting for the bus to take me to the BART, and then my ears popping as I zip beneath the water into San Francisco. New constants are gathering for dinner every night at a table with a home cooked meal. New constants are sometimes waking up to the soft snoring of my roommate and having to put in headphones to drown it out.

New constants are having people who are actually aware of what’s happening in the world, of white nationalists, of Nazi’s marching the streets with shouts of “blood and soil” (who, hopefully, will not remain a constant), and being willing to sit down and talk about it when you yourself have no idea where to even begin. New constants are having this community who, unlike so many communities you’ve been part of before, actually need to process this shitty way in which the world works and figure out our place in it. New constants will be seeking out ways to physically right the wrongs in this world rather than just talking about it.

New constants will eventually become old constants. The creaking of the house will not make me think that someone is breaking in, but rather everything is just settling into place. The pink sky at night due to the city being so close will probably stop being dreamy and turn into a source of frustration. The time difference will stop surprising me every time I have a friend tell me they’re going to bed, and I’ll adapt.

Life is all about adapting.

Tomorrow’s my first day at work, meaning I’ll have to figure out the transportation things before I actually stand under one of the many bus stops near my home, learn all about a new job, and I’ll have a million more things to adapt to. The second I feel like I’m finally getting a hang of this place, things are changing.

But while I adapt to these changes and new constants, I know some of my old constants will remain. The sun will still be rising. The city still hums.

My family and the friends who I consider family will continue to be just a text away if I need them, and the same remains for them.