After my last post about how I read and write in small portions now, I resolved that it was time to finish Eleven Stories for 11:11, so I pulled an all nighter and did just that. The last all nighter I pulled was in July 2021. I truly think that is a new record for an intermission between staying up all night. I think what I binge wrote came out quite nicely. Half of the stories are already edited, so if things flow, I could have a new book out before I’m 27.
However, my mind has not adjusted back to full clarity, and I have a lot I want to say, but it’s kinda fuzzy right now.
I’ll start with this – I wrote a novel, biked to California, and attended college all in about one year – which some might say is productive. Well, on Friday I called the girl I love and finished a book in about 40 hours. One of the stories in the collection was written in 2013, and I met her when I was 17. So that was ten years worth of work accomplished in one night.
I think that a lot of time can go by without any growth. I think all the things can be in order, you can change a lot of things you do, but when the thing you are waiting to do happens, you can age 10 years in 10 seconds.
I got off my chest what I needed to say to her, and afterwards I felt freer. Because I think that sometimes, just going around your whole life without knowing if the person knows how you feel, causes a lot of anguish and confusion.
All was going well, until from a dark place of my heart, with good-intentions, and a sleep deprived hallucination, my paranoia got the best of me. The good record we had playing, had a scratch and skipped. I texted her a faux pas at midnight. I’ve learned from my friends in jail – when your girl leaves and you’re in the joint, you better hope to God that it ends on good terms, or you gonna be spending the next three months wondering what she’s doing out there.
And it’s her life and I trust her. And you know, IRL I surround myself with a lot of good guys who are trying to better themselves, deserve love, and are decent respectable individuals. What I see on the internet is a different story.
But I said what I needed to a person I once needed. And there is something very freeing about that. I hope it doesn’t stem from a place of feeling like I have to win.
And so I get a new fortune cookie. The koan is, is it better to be waiting to die, or to be afraid of death?
I have something in my life. My life is something. And walking around with a shadow hanging over your head because you don’t know how much you are loved, renders a lot of amazing things meaningless. My life is not meaningless, and I had to see/hear that through her eyes/words to know it. I can fly away now, little bird. And now it really is, do I love her because I needed her, or do I need her because I love her?
A few last points.
1. We are friends, not lovers. Her words not mine. Wait, hang on, I wrote that sentence backwards. We are lovers. Those were her words. (Freudian slip?)
2. I am a butterfly. I sat with myself in my cocoon long enough to find my meaning in life, and I have matured. Maybe she still needs to figure that out for herself.
3. Sometimes ice cream is the solution to our problems.
4. Here’s the longest story short: Whoever she is, it doesn’t really make a difference. It does because you don’t love someone to fill in your idea of them/who you want them to be. You love them. It doesn’t make a difference to me. I’ve seen the other side, and unless I’m forgetting something crucial, I don’t think it will ever make a difference how I feel about her, so we might as well be together.
5. It doesn’t do well to be in a relationship when you are in love with someone else.
Hopefully this blog post doesn’t alienate anyone. I’ll end with some Charlie Kaufman quotes.
“You are what you love, not what loves you. ”
“You can erase someone from your mind. Getting them out of your heart is another story.”
“CLEMENTINE: This is it, Joel. It’s going to be gone soon.
JOEL: I know.
CLEMENTINE: What do we do?
JOEL: Enjoy it.”
Ben Bonkoske 