Goodbyes.

       When she was born, her family wasn't rich. Not rich in the sense of money. There was lots of moving from place to place, houses and neighborhoods became blurs mixed together. At one point her mom had cancer and she learned what it was like to truly be scared. She was never the crazy girl who was friends with everyone, making friends was hard for her, she was shy. Small, quiet... she had a thin string of friends, usually one or two, sometimes none at all. She spent a lot of time at home because at home it didn't matter what she looked like, how she acted... No, she was never rich.
       But at the same time she was. Her family was knit tight from all the struggles, so her older brother was her best friend for a long time. They shared a room in most of the houses, sleeping on the same creaky, wooden bunk bed. He always go the top, and she was always on the bottom, that was just how it was, and she liked it like that. In the night, he would hang over the side of the bed and they would talk to each other until all the blood rushed to his head.
       There was this old tape recorder from when there mom was a teenager and they would use it and pretend like they had a news channel. They could speed up the recordings and laugh their heads off because they sounded like chipmunks. When she was 6 they lived in the basement of her Nana and Papa's house, in the backyard there was a red and white tree house. Everyday they would spend time in there, she even made curtains so they could stay in there while it rained. Together they made sling-shots and pretended they were spies, it was a second home to them.
       When she was 7 they had an obsession with building forts. Using tables, blankets and huge stacks of books as weights, they make precarious stretches of what seemed like luxurious mansion. They sneak Graham crackers and Life cereal into make-shift pantries, in the night they'd lay on the old green carpet and hang a flashlight so they could play Pokemon together.
      He was sometimes mean to her and they'd fight, ending up with bruises and scratches. But in the end he was the one that found her crying on the staircase when she'd had a nightmare and hugged her. It wasn't a mistake that they were put in the same family... In Elementary he was bullied, a lot, every day he'd come home from school hurt and broken, he was a little bit weird, and he was tormented endlessly by people who didn't understand. She spent time alone at recess, so when they came home they had each other.
       As they grew up into teenagers, moving stopped happening, and they were able to make friends with people who cared about them. They had two younger siblings now and no longer shared a room. He became more confident and was the one making the family laugh at the dinner table. She still was the reserved girl that she had been when she was little, but she found people who were okay with her, and at the same time they were able to help her be a little crazier. But if something bad happened they were still the other's life line, he still came into her bedroom every evening and talked to her about everything, or sometimes they wouldn't even talk, they'd just read together.
       On some of those nights they'd talk about what they wanted to be when they were older. She wanted to be a nurse, then an architect, then a writer, then an engineer, then a teacher, then a pharmacist. He wanted to be a basketball player, then a musician, then a soccer player, then he began talking about being a soldier. She didn't believe him, every boy wants to be a soldier at some point right? As he began his Junior year of high school he talked about being a cop, and joined the Military program at his school, one day he came home in Army uniform, and suddenly he looked like a man. She began to realize it wasn't a phase as one night he came in and said, "This is what I want, after all this time of wondering, I know who I want to be." She was proud of him and looked up to his courage, over just 7 months he'd grown up.
       Then came the catch, he was allowed to begin his service at the age of 17. Meaning, that he would be leaving to South Carolina in the summer to start Basic Training. He was going to leave. She cried as she watched her hero get sworn into the National Guard, Private Carlile. She knew he had grown up, but she had forgotten that when you grow up... you leave...
      ... I could never be more proud of my older brother, and I'm so happy he found something that makes him happy. But my heart kind of breaks thinking he'll be gone, I know it's just the summer, but even training is dangerous, and it's just another step closer to an even bigger goodbye...