Blood IS Thicker Than Water

Leo. Kevin. KB. Franky. Carlos. Demetrius. Brennen. Shakimo.

Best Friends.

These people are figures in our lives that shape who we are and who we will become. They shape how we think and how we approach situations. Best friends validate or nullify the way you feel, they may even lead to you change the way you feel about certain things. I've thought about these people that walked into my life at various stages and I've arrived at a conclusion; I love these men like brothers, but there is one person who trumps them all. My actual brother.

Omar (or as you may know him, "Crypt0") has always been iconoclastic, stranger than fiction and vibrant. He's been the guy that can fix my computer for me, teach me how to read a play, take me fishing and bike riding in Alligator Alley, and so many other things... I love my brother more than life itself. I hear stories of people who never got along with their siblings and quite frankly, I feel bad for them. I don't feel bad for them because of how their lives turn out because surely many of them are great people, but I feel bad for them because I had the gift of knowing that no matter how many people dropped out of my life, I could never lose Omar.

Those around my brother gravitate towards him. People who meet him are like new planets entering orbit in his solar system, and he's The Sun. He smiles, they smile. He cries, they cry. He has a gift. He just so happens to have every quality that people find appealing, no matter the subjective nature of people. He is a positive person, and he radiates that. He has always radiated that. There was a point when I was younger that my parents were teetering on the edge of divorce. He was busy with marching band and theater, and I was always stuck at home listening to my parents' war of words. These moments cut like a shard of glass. He would come home late and by then the fighting was long over, I would wait for him in our shared room, hoping he would have time to spend with me. He always did. He would bring out sheet music and play a song for me on his keyboard, or he would just talk to me. He always knew what to do. This is Omar.

I got lucky, I did. I realize that. I ended up joining the Army and I ended up deploying, once in 2015 and now I'm on my second one. I plan on getting out and at first, I was really confused about where I was gonna go. I mean, I had my actual plan scoped out, I was going to go to college with the G.I. Bill and then law school and become a lawyer. The only nagging question was where I was going to find myself doing this. What city. What state. I bounced around a few ideas and I settled on either Austin, TX or New York City and I was really certain that it was down to those two, but then something happened. My brother moved from Miami to L.A. and he invited me to visit. I did, and I fell in love with the city. I thought about the prospect of being able to live in a city that is perpetually suspended in spring, but more importantly than that, I would get to spend a great deal of time with my brother and his lovely girlfriend, Janelle. This changed it all for me. I was 70% sure I was getting out of the Army before, with the other 30% being reserved for self-doubt and fear, but when I learned that I could begin my life near my all-time best friend, I jumped. L.A. is my next home, and now I'm sure that I'm going to thrive, because I got lucky. I got lucky that my best friend just so happened to be the same guy that I would call my brother.