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7 de agosto

Hola a todos que estan leyendo mi journal! Yo soy Diego Obregon, y quiero ser un tatuador. Perdoname, pero necesito escribir en castellano y ingles. Necesito hablar los dos igualmente porque yo vivo en California, y es que estoy practicando.

Bueno. Voy a South Dakota en mi coche, pero no se si mi coche puede ir sin morir jajajajaja. Voy a visitar con mi amigos.

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August 7th

Hello to everyone reading my journal! My name's Diego Obregon, and I want to be a tattoo artist. Sorry I write in both Spanish and English, but because I live in California, I have to speak both equally, so I'm practicing.

[I really don't need the practice, I guess. I've lived in Mexico and California for the past few years, so my Spanish gets worked out one way or another. I'm also not directly translating all of it, just kind of saying things as I go. I'll probably say more in English, I'm less talkative in Spanish...]

I got a note in the mail today telling me to go back to South Dakota. I'm...afraid to go. I don't know what things are like there anymore, I haven't spoken to anyone since the incident. I wonder if people still think we're crazy. If people think I'm crazy. I wonder how everyone has been, and at the same time I kind of don't want to find out.

All the same, I think I'm going to go. I don't know if my car can make the trip without dying though, hahaha.

I'm hoping to make this an art book as well. Whenever I come up with tattoo designs I'll put them in here. Hopefully I'll be good enough to do what I love soon. In the meanwhile, I'll settle for people not thinking I'm crazy.

Diego

August 15th

I stopped to sleep for a while off the road, and I had...not a dream, but more a mental image of something I know happened. I'm afraid to start driving again. I can barely see, and I keep reliving it in my head, every second of it, just over and over again.

Corre! Corre, Diego, corre!

Run...run, Diego, run...run, and leave your family behind to die.

They told me to leave. They told me to go to a friend's, to get away, somewhere safe. They didn't tell me somewhere safe was somewhere I'd never see them again. They didn't tell me they were going to die.

They didn't tell me I'd have to grow up on my own.

It feels like I'm running away again. I'm going back to South Dakota, going where I went after it all happened. This time there won't be the house, though. No green walls and empty living room, no dirty bedroom that I can't maintain because I never learned how to clean, no papers taped to the walls to hide my failures...

No teddy bear in the kitchen cupboard to keep me company.

I miss them so much, every day. Even though I hate LA for all of these bad memories, I go back sometimes. Just to feel like I'm close to them again, even just for a while. It doesn't make me feel closer, though. Just more distant, and more guilty.

There wasn't anything I could have done to stop it, not at 15. I was just a teenager. I didn't know anything about it. My sister did, though. She told me to go, and that she would translate for the people that were coming. I never got a name. No idea who did it. The police got them, apparently, but too little too late. Only now do I have an idea as to why, and this is seven years after the fact.

I don't know if I'm going to make it to South Dakota in time. I don't know what will happen if I don't go. I don't know if I have the strength to get myself out of this car and go on living, if I do make it. I'm going to try.

But it's going to hurt.

Diego