The Diary of Our Love

Chapter 1

When I look back in time, I know that there is no other place I could be but here where I am now. Where we are now. Deep inside, I knew I have always belonged here with him and I cannot avoid the smile on my lips as I watch him play with the children. He is happy and smiley, but believe me, it hasn't been always like this. For years, he fought a huge battle that many times he thought impossible to win, but he did. Our house is now filled with laughter and screaming and joy as the kids laugh and giggle with his jokes and funny games. He is a wonderful father. There are five children running around our garden with joy and youth and hope. We have three of our own; two little girls who are five and a little boy who is two and the other two are older and from his previous relationship. A girl and a boy. They come here from time to time to spend some time with us. They are wonderful children and we have a great relationship. I have to say that I love them as if they are my own, even though in no way I try to be their mother. I try to be their friend instead and it works because I am sometimes their confident, the one they run to for protection and to play and to ask questions.

I would like to tell you the story of our life though. The story of our love. I would like to let you know how we met and how we got here. What a bumpy ride it has been... Our love story... the story that made me cry, despair, laugh, fight, suffer and surrender at last. The same was felt by him too, I have no doubts about it. This is the story of two people who never stopped loving one another even if apart. Nothing was easy or simple for us. Everything was extremely complicated and challenging. Life has played it rough for us, but we triumphed. Our love prevailed. They say love always win and for quite some time I doubted that, but here we are... us... together. In the end love always wins, I can assure this. We learned this holding onto each other, supporting each other and believing in one another. The one thing we have always known was that we never stopped loving each other since we met. Do you believe in love at first sight? We didn't and still, maybe it is what happened to us. No... that was what happened to us. We fell in love at first sight.

It all started in Barcelona in 1993. Yes, it started in Spain during the huge Black album tour, the infamous Nowhere Else to Roam tour.

I am Spanish and I was only 21 years old when I met him. At the time, I was just a young girl who was planning to go to college that same fall. I didn't go right away after finishing high school because I was busy with my new work at the time, modeling, that I started at the tender age of 16 like most models do. The day we met was terribly hot. It was mid-June and I was making an important campaign for Guess. Even though I was shooting in the town I lived in as my house was just half an hour away from there, the agency had a strange policy, while working, models should stay at a hotel because they couldn't be distracted with anything but work and it was easier to start a day. We didn't have to commute, for example, as the whole team was staying in one place. Life is tricky though, for my biggest distraction ever while working happened right there at that hotel. Still, I played by the rules. The money was good, and it had brought me independence quite soon in my life and that, for me, was the only good part of my job.

At that period, I had broken up with my boyfriend so I couldn't really concentrate on the photo shooting because I was thinking about Rob, and how I could have been unfair to him. In fact, I missed him. Rob had been my boyfriend since we were 15 years old, since high school, and he was the one introducing me to heavy metal and later on to Metallica. Since then, I became really devoted to the band, breathing everything they have done. That year, that month, that week, I was finally going to see them live for the first time.

Anyway, I broke up with Rob because I thought I was too young to commit myself to someone and things were getting very serious between us, so I thought it was better to let go. I wanted freedom above all. I didn't want to be stuck in a relationship. I still had so many things to do and I felt like he was imprisoning me. I know I hurt him badly with my decision and I ended up hurting myself as well and that was the reason why I was thinking so much about him that week and completely unware how the table would turn around for a completely different path.