As per usual, I am listening to the saddest music on the planet. I don’t – God, how I start so many sentences with a negative (and I also think that use of an em dash is one of the few correct usages of the punctuation; It is usually a break in a sentence or thought, not necessarily a continuation of a previous point as it is commonly used in modern writing). Hmmm. I don’t…I don’t remember what I was going to say: I don’t want to act like my pain is any more important than anyone else, and I don’t want to validate it any more than it needs to be reasonably acknowledged. If your arm was broken, you might want to mention it to someone.
I guess I just have come to rely on writing. I knew I needed to write tonight, not because I wanted to, but because, like Bukowski, things really start getting screwy pretty fast if I don’t do it. I journal, so it doesn’t have to be a public affair if it doesn’t have to be. But, I have come to rely on these blog posts as a way to share with the world whatever I happen to find wrong with myself that I don’t want to carry alone. Whether it goes into the ether and evaporates right out of my soul, or hundreds of people now know, it really doesn’t matter to me. I don’t think of writing as an addiction. I also don’t look at the belief that I have come to depend on 12-step meetings as a weakness. I think there are a lot of things I am trying to figure out, not because I want to, but because a lot of things have gone pretty screwy for me.
I’ve been writing on Substack, and for those of you reading this on Substack, I am also posting this on my website BenBonPoetry.com. I have never really introduced myself on Substack. I am planning on writing an introduction letter for Substack, which will also appear on my own website. However, the moral of tonight’s letter is that you don’t know a person just because you read their blog posts, or went to high school with them. I don’t think I knew who I was when I was 18; A lot of people don’t know who they are at that age. I’m 27 years old, so I have a basic idea of what my personality is like, but that doesn’t mean I know who I am.
You sit there on the bus for the thousandth time since you’ve moved back and recite a Good Will Hunting Scene for the hundredth time, and you cry, because even though you might not have been a genius, it still wasn’t your fault. I’ve been telling myself for a long time that ‘I don’t blame that kid” anymore; It wasn’t his fault for all he had to go through. But he was told it was his fault for who he was, by someone who was told it was his fault for who he was. So who do you blame, Grandpa?
I think the worst thing about when you are trying to get to know someone, and by that nature, trying to unknow yourself, is that you are far too attached to the things you hate about yourself, what happened and why, more than you could ever allow yourself to get attached to someone else, and you blame them for that sort of thing.
Ben Bonkoske 