Chapter 1: Humble Beginnings pt 1

November 19, 2014. The day I fell in love at first sight with Christopher Ryan Willey—that’s WILL-Lee, as he’d be the first to remind you. He’d want that emphasis handled just right
Many years prior to meeting Chris there was Friday, June 14, 1991. That’s when Alexandria Christine Taylor arrived. That’s me. I was raised by Sheila, a badass hippy lady who didn’t take shit and would do almost anything for her children and Leroy, a musician and weed advocate. He was a man of contradictions—perpetually struggling with addiction, yet possessed of a deep, unshakable faith in Jesus.
I was the youngest of three. First came Daniel, the quiet, nerdy, intelligent oldest; then Camille, the artistic, quirky, intellectual middle child. As far as families go, we’re close—maybe in an unconventional way, but with a love that runs incredibly deep.
The rules were simple: Never go a day without a hug. Also: Do as I say, not as I do. That was the childhood motto. Today, that unconventional love has morphed into a genuine vibe. We’re the kind of siblings and parents who can sit down, light up a fat joint, and just be together. It’s deep, it’s messy, and it’s ours.
My life in Florida—and my friendship with Tiffany Crystal Worman—started because of an undercover FBI agent. We fled Dillwyn, Virginia, in a spontaneous blur because my dad was being investigated for allegedly receiving hundreds of hits of acid through the mail from New York. I was four years old, and I was blessed enough to meet this preppy, pink overloaded girly girl that made such a beautiful impact in my life.
Tiffany and I were neighbors on Van Doren Avenue, but our real foundation was built at Denny’s. While her mom was out on the floor waitressing, my dad was in the back over the grill. We were two kids on the same street, born out of the same hustle, and she became the best friend I could ever dream of.
When I first saw Tiffany, my immediate thought was no. She was a vision of pink—sparkly dress, sparkly Mary Janes, and a matching bow. I was the opposite end of the spectrum: long, messy hair, an oversized Pocahontas shirt, and purple pants. I didn’t have time to tie my shoe laces, let alone wear any sparkles.
But, after our parents forced our friendship we immediately clicked.
Tiffany’s life was the blueprint of everything I wanted. The nice house, the staged portraits, the abundance of toys. We became a collective—holidays, birthdays, and yearly season passes to Busch Gardens. We evolved together, from Eminem fans to emo kids obsessed with The Used. Her house became my second home for weeks on end, through Youth Group meetings and summer camps. We were a single unit, impossible to pull apart
While Tiffany had her family portraits, I had the swamps. I spent those years wondering through the humidity, feeding gators with frogs I’d snatched from the weeds. It was a world of sharp teeth and soft mud. I’d return to civilization missing a shoe, covered in swamp water, and completely at peace.
My parents’ divorce wasn’t just a legal filing; it was a fight I witnessed at six years old. I remember the weight of it—the screams and the look in my mother’s eyes. It was the sound of a woman who had been cheated on and mistreated for a lifetime. I saw the exact moment it broke her, the moment she reached the end of her rope and let go.
The violence was specific and messy. My mother lunging with a boot horn; my father falling back into the ironing board. But the memory that really sticks is the walk to the Southgate shopping center. Standing at a payphone outside of Big Lots, my mother made me call 911. She coached me through the lie, or the half-truth, making me tell the operator that I’d seen him hit her. He went to jail that night, and at six years old, I learned how much power a few words into a receiver could have.
There is a specific kind of weight to being a child and having the police question you. They separated us—the three of us against the law—asking about the violence and the “funny-smelling” smoke. But the training had already taken hold. We were experts in the art of the family secret. When they asked if it was more than just cigarettes, we didn’t blink. We knew exactly what to say, and we knew exactly how to protect our world.
In a desperate, final attempt to stay together, my parents decided we needed to be somewhere else—anywhere else. We liquidated our lives, packed into an RV, and eventually found ourselves on a plane in NYC headed for London. To them, it was a fresh start. To me, it was an exile. I looked back at Florida and felt the crushing weight of a final goodbye to Tiffany, the anchor I was being forced to pull up.
Our journey was a blur of trains and ferries, moving from London to Wales and finally to Dublin for Christmas. Then came Sligo, where I stood in the town my grandmother once called home and visited my Great Uncle Christi. Ireland felt impossible. It was a land of mountains with castles built right into their bones and grass so green it looked painted. And the sheep—I’d never seen anything like them. They were as large as buffalo, roaming through a landscape that felt a million miles away from the life I’d left behind.
Ireland almost claimed us. But at the last second, the plan shifted. By the Grace of God, my parents turned back toward the life we knew. We returned to Florida, unpacked the shipping container, and settled back into the heat of New Port Richey. The “most important person in my world” was no longer a memory—she was my best friend again.
The “hail mary” in Ireland didn’t work. The marriage collapsed, and my father chose the music over us, pursuing a rock star life that he believed was waiting for him in Amsterdam. Watching him leave on that Greyhound bus was a different kind of pain; it was the sound of a family ending. I stood there watching the exhaust, truly believing that was the last time I’d ever see my father.
The Amsterdam dream didn’t take. A few months later, he wasn’t on a stage; he was flying into Miami, where he was arrested for cocaine possession. It was a swift, brutal end to his getaway. My father had gone looking for a new life, but he ended up right back where he started—tangled up with the law and further away from us than ever.
The three-hour drive was always the same, ending in a room where the only way to touch my father was to press my palm against a cold glass partition. We’d hold our hands up to one another, mimicking a connection through two inches of reinforced wall. I was his little girl, deeply codependent and utterly lost, watching him fade away in a blue jumpsuit for nearly a year. Every goodbye through that corded phone felt like losing him all over again.
Alcohol became my mother’s silent partner during those years. She had it rough—three kids hitting puberty, a house filled with constant friction, and the solo burden of every single expense. While my father was out being a “rock star” and getting arrested in Miami, she was in the trenches. I don’t judge her for it now; I couldn’t have survived it. But a kid’s memory is long, and those nights stayed with me.
The violence between us was sudden and sharp. My brother would sucker-punch my sister, and she’d retaliate by crying to my mom who winging him by the rat tail into the coffee table. But the emotional bruises were deeper. After my bike accident, there was no ER visit, just my mother telling me to “suck it up.” I spent the next several months at Tiffany’s, the only place where I could heal, eating soft foods like mashed potatoes and applesauce while my body fixed itself. I don’t hate her for it; I just recognize that for my mom, nurturing was a foreign language.
My father was released from prison just as I was starting Gulf Middle School. I didn’t hesitate; I moved in with him immediately, leaving my brother and sister behind with my mother for a house in Beacon Woods on Ogalala Street. But the “daddy’s girl” fantasy was short-lived. Not long after I arrived, he met Audrey. My codependency couldn’t handle the competition. I was monstrous in my attempts to tear them apart, waging a one-girl war against their relationship—a war I ultimately lost when they married on the day before Valentine’s Day February 13, 2004.