Sufriendo is the present participle of the verb sufrir (to suffer). It's a highly emotional word that conveys deep pain and anguish.
In this heartbreaking ballad, Selena uses it to express the intense torment of unrequited love. The line "Quizás me muera sufriendo" (Maybe I'll die suffering) is incredibly dramatic, perfectly capturing the feeling of desperation for a love that will never be returned.
This song is a classic tale of loving someone who doesn't love you back. Selena sings about being completely consumed with thoughts of a person, admitting, "Siempre voy pensando, pensando en ti" (I'm always thinking, thinking of you). This brings her a mix of joy and sadness, because she knows it's a one-sided feeling.
She calls herself "triste y tonta" (sad and silly) for even imagining that this person would look her way. It's a feeling of hopeless devotion, where she knows her dreams are just "sueños locos, pura ilusión" (crazy dreams, pure illusion). The song's central, heartbreaking idea is that this person will never love her "Como te quiero yo a ti" (The way that I love you).
Selena Quintanilla-PĂ©rez grew up in Lake Jackson, Texas, fronting her family's band, Selena y Los Dinos, with her brother A.B. writing the songs and playing bass and her sister Suzette on drums. She was raised speaking English, and her father drilled the Spanish lyrics into her phonetically, line by line, years before she was fluent in the language she sold millions of records in.
Tejano was a men's business when she took it over: she won the Tejano Music Award for Female Vocalist of the Year nine years running from 1987, and Selena Live! took the 1994 Grammy for Best Mexican-American Album. "Como la Flor", from 1992's Entre a Mi Mundo, is the song attached to her name more than any other, and Amor Prohibido (1994) put four singles at number one on Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart, among them "Bidi Bidi Bom Bom" and "No Me Queda Más". She was shot and killed in Corpus Christi on March 31, 1995, aged 23, by the former president of her fan club. Dreaming of You, the English-language crossover album she had been recording, was released that August and entered the Billboard 200 at number one.