Ben Bonkoske

  • birth bath

    I’ve had so many ideas about what I need to say the last few (two) days. It is wonderful the amount of thoughts that drive on my mental highway. We all just hope there isn’t an accident.

    Since I have nowhere to start – let’s start with a little self-pity. 🙂

    I haven’t celebrated my birthday in 9 years. I think that’s all. Oh. Tomorrow is my birthday. YIPPIE! Hopefully some people call.

    Last night, I read an entire book titled Alan Carr’s Easyway to Quit Smoking. You are allowed to read it while you smoke (haha, see what I did there). But I was done. I’ve been done for 10 years. I’ve lost 10 years of my life to cigarettes. Three that were supposed to be good. And 4 others. But last night, I finally read something that helped reveal why I will no longer be smoking, and why it will be easy – instead of the eighteen months I spent white-knuckling my willpower to not smoke.

    This all being said, I’m resetting my sobriety date. I don’t care what other people say. I have not been sober these past three months. April 3rd, 2024. That’s my date. It means something to ME. Not all the other girl’s birthday’s I’ve “quit.” My last cigarette was this morning after I finished the book (You are encouraged to have your last cigarette after reading the book), but I’ll go by the 3rd.

    :

    In another post titled “Still Thinking” I referred to myself as a butterfly. Someone (an old caterpillar) told me that 27 is the year that you either figure it out, or you don’t. So unless I just figured it all out last night thanks to Alan Carr, it’s about time I understand everything. That being said, I’d like to amend my statement. I am not an entire butterfly. I am a caterpillar with wings. I am this caterpillar –

    Side note – I’m listening to The Black Keys and I should give Ryan N. a call tomorrow (my birthday). So yes, my birthday is really just a good excuse to call the people you don’t get to talk with often enough.

    I had some impending blog post about the nervous system and how it is related to love. How who we think we love is just the person which has the deepest nervous system’s reaction based on either joy, sex, laughter, pain, or the chemical of feeling understood. It’s a losing battle when you are not recreating those neural pathways with someone, especially when they are creating new ones with someone else. I write to stay alive in their minds. But you know, muscles atrophy in everyone if not worked out. People forget, ideas vanish, and I don’t care about dying for someone that never loved me either. But when I write that I’ll never be back again, that little fear in their heart, makes them know they love me.

    Oh, and last but not least, on my gratitude list, the last thing I wrote was this other things not called God but is the crappy conversation with the universe. The name of this entity is IT. I read the book, and I’ve got to remember my fears are just a little bitch demon that scares me.

    .

  • byby

    Before I get into all sorts of human behavior, etc. I’ll try to open with this sentiment, that is fleeting, as do all good things when I think too much – even in Gods’ virtue.

    The first thing is, I’ll try not to break the fourth wall, and start addressing the reader. Hopefully all things can be said in vague references, outside of any personal anecdotes that would incriminate anyone.

    But that is what I’d secondly like to talk about. I write. I will write. Whether in my journal, or on another blog, or in my books. I’ve got to. I’d float away if I stopped writing. You’d never see me again.

    But that being said, I really ought to try and refrain from writing things that may do anyone psychological damage, emotional harm, or cause spiritual existentialism.

    Last night was the first time I thought of a poem, and didn’t write it because, although it might be well understood, I knew it would help no one. It would only affirm our despairs – and therefore perhaps normalize it through poetry. So I did not write what I had to say.

    And I’ll work to not write things that are upsetting, confusing, or build conflict. It’s disrespectful. However, if you were unlucky enough to see Typewriter Thursday, you can see that my intention of “slowing down” by writing with a typewriter, flew out the window that evening (I had somewhere to be).

    :

    You want the want. When someone knows they can have someone, they become less interested because the yearn for them isn’t circumstantially conditional.

    “Love” is conditional. It depends on a lot of things. If it didn’t, homely homeless people would be with rich supermodels.

    I have been raised with the idea that I am always doing something wrong. Everything I do deserves some sort of punishment in my belief system. Sometimes I do things wrong. We all do. But not everything I do is wrong, nor deserves insult. Because of this notion, I rarely accurately know if what I do is wrong or not. I think the good things I do are bad.

    Further, I believe that everyone’s response to whatever I do, is punitive, or has a malicious intent – which is also not always the case.

    Let’s look at some other complexes which accompany this:

    On one side of the coin, you usually have someone who does not want to be responsible for someone who is a liability.

    On the other side of the coin, you have someone who is afraid of getting close, of being vulnerable, lest they become dependent on the other person (who is likely to abandon them).

    I fall into the latter, but have a bit of both, as most would.

    My current conflict is navigating between trying to stay reliable for both myself, and someone else. I understand that this person has no obligation to me. Therefore it is unhealthy to entertain this fantasy, for both myself and them, because it creates a false reality which both of us appear dependent, which we are not.

    I “should” be trying to explore other options to move on as a sign of a healthy progression in life, and to not do so, only confirms this false dependency. But I punish myself when I don’t abide with loyalty to this other person.

    And if I get vulnerable, my alternative method is to run.

    But inability to rationalize that I am not beholden to this person, and neither are they, either confirms a fear of being vulnerable with others, or unhealthy dependence.

    So well, although I think that God/people/life are punishing, I don’t think I should blame myself for feeling this way, and being at this crossroads. I’m just trying to explain my side of the story in a way I know how, which is writing to strangers on the internet with one outlier.

    The solution awaits. Tune in next Tuesday.

    Ps.

    It was Easter today. 1 year away from the end of the curse. I didn’t get up until 13:43. Night Terrors all night. I was supposed to go to church. I was supposed to be ready to swoon by noon. But I’m trying really hard, to just not be mad at myself for not having anything to have been accountable for for a while. I am happy as a general rule.

    ,
  • I’m grateful for

    I’m grateful for my few friends that have stuck with me in my life
    I’m grateful for Sam, and Nick, and Patrick specifically, and Tony
    I’m grateful for the tears when they come, and the times they go away for a while
    I’m grateful for laughter and good reasons to laugh (and the bad ones)
    I’m grateful for beautiful music that makes me feel understood, and hard rough music that I get to listen to when I’m angry at everything, and rap to make me feel like a mf
    I’m grateful I haven’t given up yet.
    I’m grateful for soda, specifically Ginger ale, root beer, and dr. pepper and mountain dew
    I’m grateful for my love of writing
    I’m grateful for the love I’ve had in my life
    I’m grateful for my broken heart and crooked smile
    I’m grateful for everything that has ever hurt me because it has made me a better person
    I’m grateful for the small few I can call my family
    I’m grateful for being in AA and the twelve steps and twelve traditions giving me a design for living
    I’m grateful I’m sober
    I’m grateful for cigarettes
    I’m grateful for blonde milfs and porn
    I’m grateful for my therapist who can take all my shit that I hate about myself and life, and turn it into something intelligent sounding, and make life easier
    I’m grateful for my grandma
    I’m grateful that it is 1 am and I’m not alone in this universe, not really
    I’m grateful for pictures, even though I try to hide from the world
    I’m grateful for the blonde, the brunette, and the redhead
    I still hate my dad, but not really
    I”m grateful for John Royse for being a father to me
    I”m so grateful for David Foster Wallace who took his life for writing so that I know I will never be alone and understand everything
    I”m grateful that I have a lumpy bed and a warm living room
    I”m grateful for television and YouTube
    I”m grateful I’m a good person at heart, no matter how bad I can be
    I’m grateful I believe in God
    I’m grateful for twilight
    I’m grateful the Government knows I know my apartment is bugged, and keeps me in check, because I know I’m looked after by something that I’d hope is trying to help me
    I’m grateful for teaching when I get the opportunity to do it, and the laughter of young kids
    and I guess I’m grateful for something else I can’t describe but I wouldn’t call it God, I’d just call it the crappy conversation the universe has with me because it knows who I am and I can’t lie my way out of it all, and suicide is waiting right in my kitchen

  • sky line

    Today. I went through my old blog posts on poetwithoutapen.com, and I am saving them as word documents, because maybe all of my writings should be on one website (or in one place). Once this website’s time comes, I’ll probably have to do it all over again, so I might as well start saving everything as a word document, uploaded to the cloud – God forbid that everything gets wiped from my computer (or this earth).

    Reading some of those original posts is a throwback (March-May, 2018) …So six years ago. They are all fragmented sentences, and I obviously really lived in a made-up make-believe world, that must’ve not made a whole lot of sense to the outside reader. Here is one:

    confidence

    April 1st 2018

    it dawned on me that if the goal is to achieve a state of home, which roots from a place of youth, then it may be best to stop looking any further. Memories of childhood aren’t particularly celebritorial and home wasn’t exactly comfortable. 30 minutes broke a four day depression, but that’s old news. Meat is back on the menu and my soul is hungry but I’m not.

    hahaha…yeah

    I know most (very little) of what I’m implying to say, but maybe not everyone would. Although I did write a relatively coherent novel around this time titled Spoon in the Road. And funny enough, I just picked a random posting, and here I am six years later to let you know, meat is back off the menu.

    A word that comes to mind with my writing is sincerity. Some call it oblivious honesty, or incriminating lecturing. I just call it sincere. I do not hide who I am online. And the purpose of these writings are to get me through the hardships I hold onto, and figure out new perspectives which can be shared, deepened, and explored with others.

    But to continue…It’s not that I “can’t control myself” with meat, it is more that I think meats (especially reds) create a sort of aggression in my system, or psyche that don’t exactly inhabitant my inner sanctum when I’m abstaining from it. I don’t think I am going full veg, because I plan to eat it at certain junctures and restaurants, along with salmon on a weekly basis. But on a day to day basis, I am becoming a vegetarian again. And here I will be, six years from now, writing about how meat is good for the soul. But

    Surprise surprise, many of my compulsive behaviors that have been plaguing me for about few months now (closer to a year), as of yesterday and today, are much more, even keeled. But

    I did get in a fight on Sunday. Stupid pride and immaturity. Doesn’t matter. It does, but I’ll deal with it in my own way. I have to eventually. Maybe it was enough of a wake up call to just grow up a little bit, as we all have to do. But

    Sure I want a soda, or something else just as sweetly indulgent, but I rationally might as well have a la croix and not a whole bar of choclate while i’m at it. I don’t know. I’m no sage guru, but it doesn’t take long for to remember something that took you so long to learn how to do, that you only been undoing for a relatively short while.

    This is my last little note before I head off. It ties in with the meat thing. You can do whatever you want. It is your own personal constitution. But at some point you have to ask yourself if your happiness is worth the betrayal of yourself. Something we know. And sometimes, we wish we don’t. Apart from eating meat, drinking soda, not going to church, smoking, staying up late, and wearing socks, I have been shaving.

    As someone who’s blog posts used to soley consist of arcane inuuedos, my facial hair is no exception to symbolism. However,

    for a long, long time, I would size up or down everyone I used to walk by on the street, by their height. It was always the first thing that mattered in every interaction. And well…I grew out of it. I haven’t cared about how tall someone is in a genuine sense in a long, long time. I can acknowledge it, but it isn’t important. It’s a sad narrow minded perspective on people, including myself. So I hope I don’t judge everyone by their facial features either.

Bencbon@gmail.com

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly