When My Cousins Were My Sisters
When you’re a kid, nobody tells you that some of the people you can’t imagine living without might one day become people you barely talk to.
Nobody tells you that the sleepovers will eventually stop.
That Grandma’s house won’t always feel the same.
That everybody will grow up, have families of their own, and somehow the people who were once part of your everyday life may eventually feel like strangers…
I grew up as an only child.
But honestly?
I never really felt like one.
Because I had my cousins.
And my cousins weren’t just cousins to me.
They were my sisters.
Baeyonna Was My Right Hand
My younger cousin Baeyonna is younger than me, and when we were kids, we were basically attached at the hip.
That was my girl.
We played Barbies together. We spent the night together. We got in trouble with Grandma together.
And apparently, we also thought we were scientists, chefs, and stunt coordinators.
Because some of the things we did as kids make me wonder how ANY of us survived childhood.
Especially poor Bria.
Bria was basically our unpaid childhood test dummy.
If Baeyonna and I came up with some ridiculous idea, somehow Bria ended up being the volunteer.
One time, we put her in the dryer, sadly.
Yes.
THE DRYER.
Before anybody calls CPS 30 years later, we only turned it on for a few seconds! Our little kid brains just wanted to hear her tumble.
Then we’d come up with ideas like:
“Let’s get inside the deep freezer!”
But somebody had to test it first.
Guess who?
BRIA!
Lord, that girl deserves financial compensation for surviving us.
But those ridiculous moments became memories I still laugh about today.
Then there were Baeyonna’s older sisters, Brittany and Kira.
I looked up to them for completely different reasons.
Kira was BEAUTIFUL.
Everybody thought Kira was beautiful.
The boys loved her. People gravitated toward her. She would be listening to music or hanging out with her friends, and little Shy would be somewhere watching her thinking:
I want to be like her when I grow up.
Then there was Brittney.
Brittany was SMART.
Teachers loved her. She was intelligent, accomplished, and seemed to have everything together.
I admired that.
In my little mind, I wanted to be beautiful like Kira and smart like Brittney.
Then there was my cousin Shalice. Going over to her house was always a good time.
And Jasmine came around sometimes too.
And yes, we had boy cousins too.
But they mostly stayed in their own lane while us girls were somewhere making memories, and probably doing something we had absolutely no business doing.
But, this was back when family was just… family
We spent nights at each other’s houses.
We played together.
We laughed together.
We got in trouble together.
We even got chased by dogs together.
Why were we voluntarily putting ourselves in situations where dogs were chasing us?
I have absolutely no idea.
Again…
HOW DID WE SURVIVE?!
But underneath all those hilarious memories is something I don’t think my cousins ever fully realized.
They filled a space in my life.
I didn’t have sisters at home.
So they became my sisters.
They gave me childhood memories that I probably wouldn’t have had otherwise.
When I think about being a little girl, I don’t just remember myself.
I remember us.
And maybe that’s why what happened later hurts me as deeply as it does.
Eventually, the Barbies disappeared.
The sleepovers stopped.
We became teenagers.
Then adults.
Then mothers.
We started building our own lives and raising children of our own.
And somewhere between those childhood sleepovers and adulthood…
Something changed.
The cousins who once couldn’t stay away from each other started becoming distant.
Family problems that had nothing to do with us started finding their way into our relationships.
Old disagreements between adults started affecting a new generation.
Invitations became complicated.
Relationships became complicated.
Even loving your own family became complicated.
And before I knew it, the girls who once felt like my sisters…
started feeling like people I barely knew.
But what hurts me the most isn’t even the fact that we grew apart.
It’s realizing why we did.
Because somewhere along the way, we started carrying family wounds that weren’t ours to begin with.
And eventually…
I became the cousin on the outside looking in.
The one who didn’t get invited.
The one watching family moments happen without me.
The one wondering how people I love so deeply could seemingly forget that I was ever part of the circle.
And that’s when I realized something that broke my heart even more…
I wasn’t the only one losing my cousins.
My sons were losing theirs too.
And THAT is where this story gets complicated.
To Be Continued…
Part 2: When Family Drama Becomes the Next Generation’s Burden
Because sometimes the saddest part of growing up isn’t losing people.
It’s realizing you never stopped loving them… even after they learned how to live without you.
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