The Diary — El diario

On my sixteenth birthday someone gifted me a diary. Bright blue pastes and in the center the image of the constellation Orion. When I opened it, a strange dedication surprised me: “So you can control the time.” At that moment I interpreted the word “control” in the sense of organizing my time.

I took writing the diary seriously and for a little over two years I was recording on its pages everything that happened to me and what I thought and felt for the people around me. A sad event made me stop writing and the diary was left in the bargueño desk of an old cabinet for many years.

Back from a strange trip to the East, without knowing it, I began to remove all the things from that bargueño desk, and among them the diary, with its bright blue covers. I opened it to the page where I had left a mark and read what I had written many years before: “Today is the most dire day of my life. Due to my recklessness, my friend Sharon has suffered a serious accident “. I felt again that feeling of guilt that I had forgotten. Tears came to my eyes. I turned to the last page and read: “Sharon is in a wheelchair and she will never recover.”

Without knowing why, it occurred to me to delete the content of those pages.

I hardly remember anything about my life since I stopped writing on that diary.

I don’t know how I have got to this moment, but now Sharon is my wife and she doesn’t remember anything about an accident.

In the diary the last pages I wrote are blank. Now I understand the phrase of the dedication.

El día de mi decimosexto cumpleaños alguien me regaló un diario. Unas pastas de color azul brillante y en el centro la imagen de la constelación de Orión. Cuando lo abrí, una dedicatoria extraña me sorprendió: “Para que puedas controlar el tiempo”. En aquel instante interpreté la palabra “controlar” en el sentido de organizar mi tiempo.

Me tomé en serio lo de escribir el diario y durante algo más de seis meses estuve plasmando en sus página todo lo que me sucedía y lo que pensaba y sentía por las personas que me rodeaban. Un hecho luctuoso me hizo dejar de escribir y el diario quedó abandonado en el cajón de un viejo bargueño durante unos cuantos años.

De vuelta de un extraño viaje a Oriente, sin saberlo, empecé a sacar todas las cosas de aquel bargueño, y entre ellas el diario, con sus brillantes tapas azules. Lo abrí por el lugar en el que había dejado una marca…