My Cousin, Alexa
Originally posted March 23, 2025
Tomorrow is my cousin’s birthday. She’s a thousand miles away in New York City, and she turns twenty-one. My cousin Alexa has consistently changed my life everyday since the moment she stumbled into it, and I want to tell you a littleeeee bit about it.
I met Alexa formally my junior year of high school, way back when in 2020. So, she’s actually not my cousin. At my seventeenth birthday party, Alexa and I found out our families come from the same small town in Puerto Rico, and our tias knew each other back in the day. When we found that out, we were already two apples in an orchard, and knowing our histories were in some away intertwined, bonded us together in a way that can never be broken. So now, every person I meet hears my cousin, even if she might not really be.
I’ve spent five years with Alexa. Our senior year of high school, we shared the role of editor-in-chief of our yearbook staff. They were our children. The boys especially liked to joke that we were their parents. We definitely fought like it. We had the kind of relationship with yearbook that we could spend the whole day screaming at each other over type font, and then walk out of the courtyard gates and back to her car like we’d never been mad at each other a day of our lives.
We took our staff to Disney once. Our digital art department took us on an Imagination Campus field trip every year, and since we were in charge, our middle schoolers got automatically put into our group. This Magic Kingdom trip with Lucas and Atlas and our photojournalistic friends changed my life in a lot of ways. I wouldn’t clock into work at Cinderella’s castle every day if Alexa and I didn’t run wild through Disney together.
Alexa’s dreams were always bigger than mine. Rather, she just decided she would make her biggest dream happen, and I chose my most realistic dream (which didn’t even work out, let that be a lesson to you- follow your big dream). In 2022, Alexa packed up her room, gave away her precious 2003 Toyota Avalon, and hauled it to Manhattan. The day she left, I was so mad at her. I was so angry with her for things I can’t even remember now. And every moment after that I longed for the days she was home and I could be mad at her one moment, and sing Silk Chiffon in the passenger seat the next. Every time I’ve seen her since, it’s been the goodbye we deserved to have the first time. I cry and cry and cry. I laugh and laugh and laugh. I love and love and love. From the first day we met I knew two things: Alexa would move to New York and become everything she ever wanted, and I would be her closest girl that was far away while she did it.
I just really miss her. I really miss her. I want to talk about her. I do constantly. Everyone that I’ve met in the past five years has known her name. My cousin is everything to me, I’ve known that since we first stepped foot in room 203 down the art hallway. I could go on and on. She’s the pedestal that without I couldn’t stand. She’s the lenses that without I couldn’t see. She’s my primita.
We have a song, that’s belonged to us and only us for about four years now. It’s called dorothea, and it’s by Taylor Swift. It’s from the perspective of a girl whose best friend moved to a big city to become someone famous, and how she’s proud but wants her to know she can always come home. Alexa, you can always come home. Happy birthday.
With love, Willy
