Perez Chris - To Selena, with Love

CHRIS PEREZ

A CELEBRA BOOK

C ELEBRA

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First published by Celebra,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, March 2012

Copyright Chris Perez, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Lyrics from Best I Can written by Chris Perez and Julian Raymond. 1999 JCJ Music (ASCAP)/Domax Music (ASCAP)/Seven Peaks Music (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

CELEBRA and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Perez, Chris.

To Selena, with love / Chris Perez.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-101-58026-4

1. Selena, 19711995. 2. SingersUnited StatesBiography.

3. Mexican-American women singersBiography. 4. Perez, Chris.

5. Tejano musiciansBiography. I. Title.

ML420.S458P47 2012

782.42164092dc23 2011046126

[B]

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Version_2

To the loving memory of Selena Quintanilla Perez and her dedicated fans around the world.

I cant erase this lonely heart that keeps on remembering.

Every day I live, I live with you, and with all the

things well never do.

Heaven holds a place for souls like mine.

Try to leave my troubled past behind.

You know its so damn hard letting go...

Standing here, holding my heart in my hands

Yes, I am...

Trying to live every day the best I can.

Lyrics from Best I Can, The Chris Perez Band

C. W. Bush/Shooting Star

A month before she was murdered, Selena and I drove out to the property wed bought in Corpus Christi. It was a beautiful piece of land, with a creek bordering one side and a hill that seemed to be the perfect place for us to build a house for the family we were planning. We loved driving out there at sunset and imagining our future together. Selena always told me that she wanted five kids, which made me laugh.

Lets try having one baby first, Id tell her. Then well talk.

This particular evening, Selena and I sat on top of our hill watching the wide Texas sky turn every color from pale blue to bright peach to inky purple. I want to raise our kids around lots of animals, Selena said. Every kind of animal there is.

You cant put all kinds of animals together, I teased. You do that, youll come outside and find nothing but a mound of feathers where something ate your chickens.

Selena leaned her head on my shoulder. Just think, Chris. This is where our kids are going to be running around and playing someday soon. Can you believe it?

I could, I told her. We continued to sit there until nearly dark, even though what I really wanted to do was jump up and start clearing our property right away. I didnt want there to be any coyotes or rattlesnakes around to bite our kids. I wanted to protect my family.

It didnt turn out that way, of course. I wasnt able to protect Selena.

After Selena was killed, I sold the property we owned together. I couldnt bear the thought of living on that land without her. I couldnt bear a lot of things for a while.

Lots of people asked me to write our story after Selena passed. I always said no. My feelings were too private. When we lose people who are precious to us, we all have to grieve in our own ways. My way was to keep my memories to myself. It was an automatic response for me to put a lid on my emotions after I lost Selena, because the feelings were so strong. I kept pushing my grief under the surface as I tried hard to continue what was left of my life.

I didnt want to think about Selena at all, because the sudden loss of everything we had worked for and believed in hurt too much. I thought about her anyway, of course. Every day, things would just enter my mind, uninvited. Id hear one of Selenas songs on the radio, or see a story about her on TV, and the pain would surface again, sharp as a needle pricking the palm of your hand.

People kept asking me questions about her, too. They wanted to know why her father objected to me so strongly that Selena and I had to see each other secretly until finally, out of desperation, we eloped. They wanted to know whether Selenawho spoke regularly to schoolchildren about the importance of staying in school and staying off drugswas as good and honest and generous as she acted in publicor was she just a really good actress? Did Selena have a dark secret? Was she murdered out of envy? Was her death the result of a drug deal gone wrong? Was she having a love affair? Was our marriage over?

I didnt care about setting the record straight at that point. I didnt answer any questions by the media or Selenas fans. I was too busy desperately trying to wall off that part of my life completely. I couldnt share my memories of Selena because that would mean accepting her death. I grieved in private and survived the loss by staying close to my family and continuing to play music. I even started a band and won my own Grammy for a Latin rock album called Resurrection, which featured songs that Selena inspired me to write after she was long gone.

Recently, though, I have begun to realize that, by burying everything, Ive actually been living my life with blinders on, just putting one foot in front of the other without really moving forward at all. I started wondering if maybe I needed to remember everything after all, and if writing a book could help me finally come to terms with losing Selena.