Friday, August 05, 2005

August 17th, 1988

“... today I’ve got some good news...Mike the lifeguard is back! Believe it or not, Claudia spent the entire afternoon at the pool. Boy, talk about a crush. And I thought I liked him! “

Although this was an exciting moment, for some reason it didn’t seam to have a great impact on me. During the days in which I thought he had left for good, I began to focus in the moving details, but that was only because I was resigned and had to concentrate on something else. But after I found out he was back, I again pushed back my feelings towards him. I think another thing forced me to focus on anything but Michael and that was the fact that I believed he was interested in my sister, rather than in me. And the way I found to challenge this was to concentrate on the only other imminent thing, the final trip to Portugal.

But, since life always plays little tricks on us, I was in for another sweet surprise, that exact same day. After I had written about Mike’s return, my next line went as follows.

“Same day, 10:40 PM...hello again! I’m back to tell you about something that just can’t wait. Debbie called me 5 minutes ago telling me that she spoke to Mike and asked if he knew about me and what he thought about me. It turned out he said I was cute and nice. I still can’t believe it! And on top of it, she gave him my phone number and he was supposed to call me sometime tonight. My mom just asked me what Debbie wanted and I tried to lie, but she didn’t believe me. She really hates the idea of Debbie getting me into this but I told her that i wasn’t going to do anything stupid or foolish and I guess she understood. I like the fact that my parents car about me and are afraid that I get involved too soon, but I hope God helps me with this one. I should feel happy, but after talking to my parents, I’m not so sure any. I’m really confused , and Claudia doesn’t even know about this. The truth is, I’ve got too much on my mind right now and I don’t know what to do.”

As I wrote this part, It looks as if I wasn’t even worried about the punctuation. All sorts of emotions where erupting quickly and intensely, making me feel extremely confused and excited at the same time. I knew something very special and accelerating was beginning but had no idea how to deal with it.

And besides all other obstacles that seam to appear in young passion stories, I had to deal with the fact that my parents were very apprehensive about all this, specially my mother. Not that she didn’t want or allow me to date boys, but because she couldn’t bring herself to trust a total stranger, which was what Michael was to them. The other problem seams to have been my sister, but I soon discovered that she was just a sub-conscience excuse for me to try to escape from something new and possibly dangerous. I didn’t feel worthy of this newfound sensation, but still I couldn’t fight it, it was too strong and exciting.

When I remember the entire situation now, I smile inside because it was indeed very special, and still is. This episode of my life represents a tattoo, it will never fade. I still think about Michael and wonder where he is, if he married, what he does for a living, if she is happy, and specially, if he remembers me at all. We only exchanged a few letters after I left, but in his last letter, I knew it was over and that I would probably never hear from him again. But that’s another episode, I will save it for later because I’m sure I have this registered in some page of my diaries, if not in many pages.

Well, after the whole confusion moment, things started take shape.