At seventeen

I was 17 when I watched someone die in front of my eyes for the first (and hopefully only) time.

It’s a funny thing, growing up on Chicago’s south side. You know violence- specifically gun violence- exists. You hear the faint gunshots in the distance. Sometimes you hear them even closer. You watch reports about it on the news. You read about it in the paper. You see the sketchy characters hanging out at the bus stop on the way to school. You know there’s a reason you absolutely MUST be home by the time the street lights come on. You’re extra observant in everything that you do. You don’t want to be a victim.

And yet, for all of this observation and awareness, it desensitizes us in a way. Because we expect it, it doesn’t shock us anymore. We don’t accept the violence as part of our lives, but we live with the inevitable. We don’t have the means to just pack up and leave for “something better.” So we adapt to make it another day.

I didn’t hear the gunshots that late summer night- the summer before I left for college. I’d been listening to gunshots outside my bedroom window for over a decade. If any sleep was to had, you learned to tune them out.

What did wake me up were the bright lights and the commotion. Being summer time, I slept with my window open, a screen in place to keep the bugs out but let the breeze in. The rotating red and white lights reflected off of my television and posters on my bedroom wall. I sat up in bed and heard the footsteps of my grandmother and mother moving through the house, as it was clear that they were awakened by the same commotion outside.

The three of us moved to the living room, wondering who- the what wasn’t even a question anymore.

We moved outside to the front porch, watching as paramedics tended to a wounded person on the lawn of our neighbor’s house across the street. Police officers milled around a parked car two doors down, the passenger’s and driver’s side doors open, retracing the victim’s footsteps, looking for answers. One notices us on the porch and approaches, asking if we’d seen anything. We tell him, “no,” as we didn’t even hear the shots.

Two doors down from us, windows open, and no one heard a thing. This wasn’t some issue with “snitching”; this was just our reality.

He walked away as we continued to look on, the young man across the street attempting to hold on to a life that was steadily slipping away from him with each fractured breath he took. We made small talk about nothing really, as if it were all happening someplace else, possibly on television. After fifteen minutes, we watched as the cover was placed over the victim.

We sat on the porch for another five-ten minutes before deciding to head back into the house. Sleep wouldn’t come easy for me after that; I turned on a movie channel and stared at that before finally falling asleep with the tv still on.

The next day we would learn from our neighbor that the young man who died was sitting in the car, listening to music with a friend when the gunman walked up to the driver’s side and opened fire. The victim attempted to run across the street when he was struck again, only getting as far as the neighbor’s lawn before collapsing.

He was the friend of a friend; I didn’t know him personally.

The next day was fairly routine. I woke up, had breakfast, watched tv, dressed and headed downtown to enjoy the summer day. I left for college a month later, and I carried the incident with me.

I didn’t carry the actual act of violence, per se. As I mentioned earlier, you get used to it- for better or worse. What I took with me was the realization that I was so numb to it all. I went to college in the suburbs and had a hard time adjusting to the silence. I moved to Kansas and mocked Topeka for a news headline that stated half of their ten homicides for the year went unsolved.

If only my old neighborhood could be so lucky.

But we shouldn’t have to accept violence as part of our everyday. We can be cautious and ready to fend off the unexpected without being so apathetic.

When my family first moved to the neighborhood, we had block parties and my friends and I were able to play without incident. It was liveable. And I believe it could go back to that place. But while people are still conditioning themselves to sleep through gunfire, we still have a lot of work to do.