For You. For Us.

I promised myself to keep this short.

October 2016. Early in the morning in New Orleans. I am walking down the street when I hear, “Laura!” (Laly is short for “Laura”) and my first thought is, “Huh? Me? Who knows me in New Orleans?!?!” I turn around and I see the girls from Spain, whom I had met on the NKOTB cruise 2013.

That, the way we met, is quite a funny story actually. We were on the cruise on a hot afternoon, and the guys were turning up the heat by doing “back rubs”… Geez… (and I was with a male I used to be married to; “they are like brothers to me, honey”…😏 )

One of the guys is putting cream over the shoulders of a blind-folded BH, Jordan is showing his “tour-bud”, when I hear a woman saying, “¡Está de la puta madre!”, which in this context means “This is awesome”, and I thought, “Spain!”.

I introduced myself to Vicky, and then she introduced me to her group; I told them something like, “I have a blog about NKOTB if you wanna check it out; it’s in Spanish,” and one of them (I believe it was Alejandra) exclaimed, “Are you Laura from the blog?!”, and I thought, “Holly-shit.”

I had seen the stats of the blog; I knew there were BHs from other countries reading it, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized that “BHs from all over the world were reading the blog.”

To me, that meant one thing: I had finally found them… “You”… Because growing up, I never had a BH friend.

Imagine a nerd, cute ADHD weirdo, with her binder covered with photos of a group of boys doing this new “pop” thing, when everyone was trying to skip school and going gaga for Axl from Guns N Roses. 🤦🏻‍♀️ It wasn’t easy, folks!

But why did I start this post with that anecdote from 2016? Because we haven’t seen each other for two years, and it felt as if we have just shared a cigarette on the top deck the night before.

That’s in fact something that happens on that boat; it’s like a time machine; or a bubble… One big, happy, hilarious, crazy bubble; with quite some drama from time to time 🤷🏻‍♀️

When you meet a BH, is a friendship for life.

You know that, don’t you?

And when the New Kids are in town, BHs rule the town ☺️

And then this week… I mean… I’ve seen you coming together for BHs in need, specially for Emily and her daughter Hailey this year, and for causes the guys invite us to join. But this week… seeing you all, seeing us, coming together for Maria, it was… “off the charts.”

“Off the charts”. Yes… I don’t know how to write about it… I see your love, I see her strength, and I freeze…

I promised myself to keep this short when I clicked on “create new post” because I don’t have enough words to express how grateful I am for you.

You who have made me laugh to tears on that “Remix a New Kid” post, and also moved me to tears with the comments at the “Two In The Morning. One at Dawn” post. And you who are still too shy to jump in 😘

I may not “follow” you (because, honestly, my ADHD brain sneezes when I log into social media) but I see you.

You matter to me.

We all matter to each other.

So here is to us🥂! Here is to a sisterhood that doesn’t recognize nor allows boundaries of any kind, and truly knows how to hangin’ tough.

I just wanted to say, basically, how grateful and proud I am to be a woman and a Blockhead, today and every single day.

Happy Women’s Day, BHs

¡Feliz día de la mujer!

xo

Laly

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