This is the second round of holidays without my mom, and I am so excited to share that it gets 100% easier and that, after year one, there are no struggles or bad feelings or mornings I wake up crying for no reason.
I’m kidding, of course. I am very funny like that.
I’ve thought about the phrase “it sucks” a lot over the past four-hundred-ish days. For whatever reason, “I’m sorry” is the go-to phrase we use when someone tells us something bad has happened.
It doesn’t really make sense, if you think about it. Almost universally, we had nothing to do with the person’s bad news. We have nothing to apologize for. (Unless you do. By all means, be sorry then.)
I found that there were two sentiments that felt a lot better to hear, and the first was “it sucks.”
Because it’s so simple. And true. And the word “sucks” is so versatile.
It felt like a vital part of me had been sucked out from the inside. It felt like pieces of my natural happiness and joy had been sucked away by a death-shaped vacuum. It felt like a matte-black void was following me like the moon, living in the sky, sucking away at the reality I knew.
It sucked.
And hearing that mirrored back at me felt like the realest thing a person could say.
The other thing that was said to me was equally simple, by a co-worker. They said: “Well… I’m glad you’re still here.”
It took me by surprise and was equal parts hug and gut punch. I knew from that moment on that was going to my go-to phrase, alongside “it sucks.”
It sucks, but there is a lot to be thankful for. And I’m grateful for every single person who is still here, and grateful for the time I got with the people who are not.
I’m grateful for the finite amount of times I got to eat something my mom made today. For the limited amount of hugs I got. For the exact number of words we shared with one another.
I hope your weekend sucks — and that it reminds you how grateful you can be.
I’ve written a lot about how I think the world would be a much better place if everybody was more honest, in real life and on the internet here. I actively encourage it.
But there’s the ugly side of that.
There’s the moments that reveal the parts of people that maybe the rest of the world didn’t need to see, the things that can’t be taken back.
They run the scale of being minor bummers, hiccups to character, to major, irreversible reveals that end relationships (or, at least, the way they used to exist) forever.
I want to say I don’t know if someone’s opinion on Kyle Rittenhouse says anything about who they are as a person.
The part of me that wants to say that is the easier, softer part of me that wants to believe that every human is at least decent on the inside. It’s the part of me that wants to avoid conflict.
I’m afraid that part of me — that part that exists in most of us — is wrong. It’s one of the reasons we are where we are.
I don’t have strong feelings about Kyle himself. I think that he is a perfect product of the system that raised him, a system that identifies him and his “ideals” as something to protect.
I see the dissonance as certain people are discussing the “gray” moral area of the case, when people of color are not afforded the same benefit of doubt.
I find it unsettling that we, as a “progressive” culture, have moved past victim shaming — unless we can find a reason that the victim of anything subjectively deserved what was coming to them, in our deeply biased opinion.
And I am never surprised, but severely distraught, at a system that can find teens of color who have killed the people who have abused, raped, and trafficked them guilty, but can find no charges at all to pin to a good ol’ white boy who found himself exactly where he put himself with the exact ingredients he needed to murder and did just that, twice.
None.
As I see these hot takes take over my feed, I find myself questioning my stance on honesty. How much do I really want to know? Every opinion and feeling on the internet is a door to be explored. And as I find myself opening them, the distance between me and my idea of radical empathy widens, and it hurts in every way to be further separated by my true north star.
There are days when we go through something that seems bigger than we can keep holding up.
On those days, the small things can feel less than trivial. The mundane details of our normal lives are smears, becoming blurs along the tunnel vision we get looking at the massive, inescapable thing.
I have to let you in on a little secret, though.
Those little things, the tiny gears of your existence, the million decisions you make at home or at your job, they are there to remind you that life goes on.
No matter how much you think this thing is going to crush you, grind you into something unfamiliar and coarse, it’s just not.
The inescapable stream of time will move you forward, pulling your feet through the grains of tasks that some days appear or feel meaningless, but are reminders that there will always be something to do, until there’s not.
You will wake up tomorrow and the thing will still be there, or it won’t, but you definitely will, as well as all the small stuff you generally sweat but can be just as sweet.
There will be people to say good morning to; people who ask how you are, and who you ask how they are in kind. There will be pets who need to be pet. There will be food that needs to be eaten and drinks that need to be drunk, books to be read, films to be watched. There are kids who will laugh and play and need someone like you in their life.
It feels so big right now. I know it does.
But there is nothing so big that the smaller things can’t fix.
Sometimes you just need to be in a room with transcendent art to remind you why you love art and why you love making it.
We saw CHVRCHES last night at the Armory and they were brilliant; their opening act, Donna Missal, became an instant new favorite, her sound impossible to pin down but her voice a unique, undeniable superpower. It was the most urgent show I have ever attended, not wanting it to end from the moment we walked into the venue, beautiful sand speeding through our fingers. It was over in the blink of an eye. But it gave me everything I needed.
I’ve talked about how lonely and occasionally stressful writing and creating art can be, and I am deep in the cave of those feelings right now. Some days I know I need to get work done and there is no earthly power that can get me to move.
Sometimes you just need a reminder, and I am so grateful to the marvelous members of CHVRCHES and Donna Missal for gently slapping me across the head.
I’m teaching a writing class today and can’t wait to share some of this artistic joy I’m carrying in my pocket. I hope you find something today that reminds you how amazing this life is.
There’s a deep pocket of people who believe that we are under attack, that we’re not allowed to say anything anymore because everyone is offended by everything. Some of those people are comedians, who evidently are not very good at their jobs. Some of them are people like your very racist Uncle Taylor.
We’re under attack, they say. You can’t say nothing, they say (because they care not for double negatives).
Never mind that the English language has thousands of words, and infinite configurations of those words, most of those combinations being offensive to exactly no one.
I saw a man on TV the other night who had zero arms. He taught himself how to shoot a bow and arrow with his feet, with more accuracy than most people have with their hands. He did everything with his feet. He ate dinner with them. He shook people’s hands with them.
Imagine being so fragile and closed-minded that instead of listening to others and being kind when it came to a few hurtful words and phrases, you took it as an infringement of your freedom, clearly misunderstanding what the word “freedom” even means.
Now imagine having no arms and seeing only a life of promise and opportunity.
We say dumb things all the time. I say “we” because I do, too. But I can also listen and learn and apologize and do better.
I’m tired. I’m tired of trying on the shoes of people who won’t even pretend to do the same. I think a lot of us are tired.
I’m tired of all these people with hands who can’t see all those fingers pointing right back at themselves.
First and most of all: I want to sincerely thank every single dang one of you who showed up to Fall Tour 2021. Whether I met you at FallCon XL in St. Paul, Twin Cities Con in Minneapolis, NerdinOut Con in Rochester, Alloy Brewing Company in Coon Rapids, or at all four dates, it was absolutely my pleasure and privilege to meet your acquaintance (or get to hang out with you again).
Making art is lonely. Talking about it with you gives me life again and again and again. I wouldn’t trade any of the silly, serious, smart, lovely or awkward interactions and conversations I have with you for anything.
Now: who needs to wait for after Thanksgiving to share with you the sale of the year?
If you enter any one of Santa’s reindeers, in all caps, as a coupon code in my online store at dennisvogen.com, you will automatically receive 20% off your entire purchase. The whole bag. Your full cart.
These books are perfect for both holiday gifting and supporting local. I’ll send them over signed (feel free to reach out to me if you want them personalized in any way!) and ordering now will help you beat the rush and any impending postal slowdowns.
As always, I hope you’re hanging in there. Thanks for the all the memories this year. All my freaking love. ❤
Talking shit about people is about as human as it gets.
It actually fascinates me how most folk, no matter how old they get, no matter what they do for a living, no matter how much they have going on in their own lives, never get less excited to sit down and talk gobs of shit.
But the older I get, in a world that feels like it deserves it less and less, I find myself wanting to be more gentle, and needing to make more connection.
My perspective is infinite now, at least relative to the span of a human life. When you’re on your death bed, do you think your last thoughts will be of all the people you talked shit about?
Or will you think about the people you took a chance on? Or gave a second one to? The people you helped, the people you reached your hand out to, the people you dragged from fires, regardless of what happened to them next.
When I got my first managing job almost five years ago, the thing I feared the most going in was that it was going to be exactly how I imagined it as an employee: a table of people talking shit about everybody they employed.
I was not disappointed. It was much how I thought it would be. I lost that job for a variety of good reasons, not the least of which being deep in the grip of the addiction I wasn’t ready to let go.
I managed to not only keep my compassion through it, but renew my vows to that empathy, and that came in handy when I was finally ready to let go completely.
There are people in my life that gave up on me a long time ago, and I don’t blame them. I gave up on myself a lot, too.
And then there are people who have told me to my face that they are so glad they didn’t count me out. And I am so grateful that those same people gave me the support I needed to be the me that I am today.
This isn’t to make anybody feel bad about the shit they talk. It’s human.
This is to remind you of the humanity it takes to talk about something more.
An exploration of addiction through my personal experience, evolutionary theories, and Galactus & the Silver Surfer.
“I’m hungry but I’m not hungry.”
Before everything, it was a feeling.
By now, I’ve heard countless people say this phrase or a variation of it. Before that, I used to think it repeatedly, say it to myself in mirrors. Even before that, before I had the handful of words I needed to use the expression, it was just a wordless thing that lived inside me, the deepest feeling I could touch with my feet.
It defines everything about addiction to me, and addiction is a part of the definition of me.
Galactus hungers.
That’s his whole thing.
Everyone can keep their Jokers and Lex Luthors and Thanoses and Magnetos. Galactus is my favorite comic book villain. He simply gets me.
He’s hungry.
He is hunger.
I read a lot of science. As an agnostic – a person who doesn’t dare make declarations about whether or not the God or a god exists, but instead lives in the gray spiritual areas, being open-minded as opposed to sure one way or another – I find science to be the closest thing to magic we have on this plane of existence.
Just like card tricks and disappearing acts and the ability to saw people in half, magic can be explained – and can be an explanation.
Evolution itself isn’t a theory; it’s a solid root of scientific history, and its influence on the rest of the tree cannot be overstated.
And it starts with mutation.
These three seeds of thought – personal, scientific, and comic book cosmic – will be intertwined as I try to explore addiction, its influences and its impact.
I have trouble opening a bag of potato chips without knowing there’s a back-up bag of potato chips somewhere in my home.
I didn’t understand this phenomenon for a long time, but the thought was always there, rocking in a chair in the back corner of my mind, haunting so many decisions. Running out of something wasn’t just bad; it was a matter of life or death. This trait branches out and mutates into others; I have trouble throwing things away and letting things go.
I am terrified of being alone, but not merely by the absence of other beings.
There is a lot of science and faux science and near-science when it comes to addiction. Something I hadn’t come across a lot specifically in my reading were the dual subjects of addiction and evolution and how they may be related.
Evolution is a fairly simple concept that just takes a long ass time.
Things mutate. Organisms, animals, human beings. If a random mutation happens to be something that is beneficial to the mutant, that organism should thrive in its environment, which will improve its chances of reproduction. If it makes babies, those children will have a good chance of carrying their parent’s mutation.
And so on.
And so I started to think: is there anything beneficial about addiction?
Galactus would not appear to be a good example of this.
He hungers. Constantly. And not for a sleeve of Ritz crackers and can of Cheez Whiz – Galactus consumes the entire energy of planets.
He existed before the Big Bang and will likely survive after this universe calls it quits; he is the cosmic embodiment of first one in, last one out. If there is nothing to eat, he will survive; if there is something to eat, he will consume.
He doesn’t do it alone, however; he has heralds, people he shares his “power cosmic” with in order to help him find places to eat. I make it sound like he drives around outer space looking for a restaurant, but what he actually does would be the equivalent of going to McDonald’s, ordering a value meal, eating the value meal, eating the rest of the food in the kitchen, eating the staff of the McDonald’s, and then eating the McDonald’s itself, brick-by-brick, until there was nothing but an empty black abyss where the McDonald’s used to be.
This is the nature of Galactus, and Galactus is a natural part of the universe.
The Silver Surfer is the most famous, and infamous, of the heralds of Galactus. He was Norrin Radd of Zenn-La, a bored man living on a peaceful, prosperous planet, who wished to travel the stars. When Galactus came to eat his home, Norrin volunteered himself as tribute, willing to help Galactus find other planets to consume if he would leave Zenn-La alone.
Galactus agreed. Norrin became the Silver Surfer, endowed with the power cosmic and a sweet ass cosmic surfboard.
At first, the Surfer would bring Galactus to planets that were uninhabited. After some time, however, the Surfer forgot who he was, and began leading Galactus anywhere and everywhere, which led to mass genocide and the destruction of countless populated planets. It wasn’t until the Surfer came to Earth, where he met the Fantastic Four and Alicia Masters, that he remembered his humanity and vowed to spend the rest of his days defending all precious life across the multiverse.
The Surfer is one of my favorite superheroes and, like the Hulk, embodies for me what being in active addiction can be like. Galactus, however, is addiction.
As you can imagine, being someone who is constantly needing a fix causes a lot of drama, and for decades of comic book continuity, Galactus stirred up the most dramatic of cosmic shit. He pitted people of all backgrounds against each other to get what he wanted. Unfortunately, a lot of them genuinely cared for Galactus. He used that. He cared for many of them, too. Until they got in the way of what he needed.
That behavior doesn’t seem beneficial from a moral standpoint. It seems downright awful.
But being selfish leads to self-preservation.
And then it started to fall in place for me.
Having more keeps you alive.
I think back to that bag of chips, and why I have an instinct to make sure there is at least one more bag of chips after that one. A trait like that would be valuable. Storing more than is needed at the moment is a behavior abundant among animals, because it increases the chances of survival.
To me, this is clearly a sign of addiction.
In a section of The Evolutionary Origins and Significance of Drug Addiction, it is factually stated that any person is capable of developing addiction. I would extend that to any living, breathing creature.
It goes on to say that the reason it is not believed that many early humans were victims of addiction is because there was never enough around to feed it. There was a constant hunting and gathering that left little time for recreation, and little supply to recreate with. Additionally, there is evidence that many of our early foods were psychoactive in nature; this would suggest our brains co-evolved with state-altering substances, which is in itself a whole other essay.
People were surviving. But they were limited in what they could consume. Since this is the way it was for most of human existence, there would have been no evolutionary reason for us to naturally develop ways to prevent or fight addiction. There wasn’t enough for anybody.
Just imagine a world in which that wasn’t a problem.
Feeling good feels good.
This means more than you think. Yes, it literally feels good to feel good, but on a deeper level, feeling good makes us think that we are doing well.
Feeling bad makes us feel bad – but bad feelings are essential to survival.
Using things that make us stop feeling bad for the sake of feeling good has existed as long as humans have. But the bad feelings we have are evolutionary; they are traits we have because they helped our ancestors live long enough to have us. It’s the reason most of us jump at a loud sound. But the bad feelings have gotten worse. As The Evolutionary Origins… says:
“Negative emotions (pain, fear, stress, anxiety, etc.) have evolved in mammals to allude to even the slightest, most harmless potential indicator of a more serious problem, leading to what may be known as a modern-day personality disorder. Personality disorders can be characterized as anything from over-anxiety to schizophrenia. Many emotional disorders that drugs mask, such as anxiety disorders, develop from the ancient adaptive mechanisms expressed by the evolved mode of personality, and may in fact not be disorders but hypersensitive neural adaptations.”
So sometimes we suffer because the people before us suffered; ironically, it was their suffering that inspired and allowed them to live. A long time ago, happiness and fitness went hand-in-hand with accomplishing things; we now have substances that give us the same feelings without any actual achievement.
This realization often sends us spiraling down.
Bad feelings feel bad.
I don’t want to end this piece without acknowledging the multitude of reasons an addiction can be created or triggered. I want to share this whole segment from The Evolutionary Origins…:
“We have discovered that the nature of addiction is not solely based on free will to use, or an individual’s conscious choice to use, but may have deeper influences. The nature of drug addiction is three-fold: biological, psychological, and social. Although humans may be biologically and psychologically predisposed to drug use and addiction, they may often be driven towards that state by social and cultural influences.
“To what extent environmental stimuli affect a person’s vulnerability to addiction is unknown and may be varying. However, we cannot ignore the great impact of environmental and mental stimuli in the progression towards addiction. It has been found that certain environmental variables breed higher vulnerability.
“Family dysfunction and disruption, low social class rearing, poor parental monitoring, and rampant social drug-use exposure may greatly contribute to an individual’s movement from substance abuse predisposition to addiction. Both acute and chronic stresses have been linked with substance abuse as well, with acute stress being one of the main influences of relapse in rehabilitated drug addicts. The widespread availability of drugs in certain areas also may affect susceptibility.
“This is exceptionally notable in low socioeconomic areas in which overcrowding and poverty have been associated statistically with increased substance abuse. In addition, repeated exposure to successful high-status role models who use substances, whether these role models are figures in the media, peers or older siblings, is likely to influence children and adolescents. Similarly, the perception that smoking, drinking or drug use is standard practice among peers also serves to promote substance abuse.”
This hits the nail on the head.
Addiction can and does affect everyone.
Knowing this – opening our hearts with compassion and empathy for those with these issues and for those around these issues – is the key to understanding and healing it.
By recognizing traits that I share with other people who have addiction issues, I’ve started to dig and pull at their roots. I’m able to see something that I never could before – the beneficial side to my hunger. At the very least, I’m able to recognize how my behavior could have been essential to my survival, but how some of those traits could be harmful now.
Eventually and regularly (though, notably, not permanently), even Galactus was able to assess his own character defects and see how he was hurting others. At one point, he exiled himself to another dimension to save this one, as written in his official Marvel biography:
“Brought to Manhattan while Reed raced to find an alternate energy source for him, Galactus was impressed with humanity’s indomitable will and constant struggle against hardship, and he chose to exile himself extra-dimensionally rather than risk destroying it all when his power returned.”
I’ve found a lot of pop culture sources of comfort and strength through my recovery which, for me, has been almost four years without picking up a drink. Nothing has ever really spoken to me like comic books do, though. Unlike Galactus, however, I haven’t been able to remove myself from this dimension.
I’ve had to learn to live with my hunger. Accept it. Try to love it.
I’m hungry but I’m not hungry.
I’m not hungry, but I am hunger.
I highly suggest these further reading materials if this topic interests you; I found these papers while searching the subject online, and I highlighted some of the text in my own essay. They contain a wealth of data and information, and deeper insights on more specific issues like criminalization.
The Evolutionary Origins and Significance of Drug Addiction by Tammy Saah
I’m not complaining, mind you. It’s probably best for you and me. But I want you to think about it.
Not me walking around naked, of course.
At some point in our history, humans decided that it was indecent to let all their fun bags and goodies hang out.
Instead of simply asking one another to wear clothing in order to be respectful of other decent humans, we turned that into law.
That’s right.
Even though I was born naked and being naked poses absolutely no threat to any other person, there is a law imposed on my body that I cannot deny unless I want to be subject to punishment.
I keep hearing things about “slippery slopes” and “freedom” and I can’t help but wonder:
Where is my freedom to be exactly as I am?
There is no pot of boiling water. We were cooked before we were born.
I don’t wear clothes because it’s respectful to you. I wear them because it’s best for everybody else. And also, because I literally have to.
When a TV show lasts a long time, it tends to turn off viewers for a variety of reasons.
Yet, somehow, people are usually acutely aware of why they no longer like the TV show.
It became repetitive. Nothing was happening. It established a successful formula early on and never really deviated from it. The characters didn’t learn or grow from their experiences.
But they still wonder why they’re in a loop.
If I didn’t have creativity in my life, I’d be dead.
Not literally, physically. But emotionally, mentally, spiritually for sure.
And that’s the key: I have to have a goal in order to break the spiraling nature of ordinary existence.
It doesn’t have to be creative. That’s the amazing part of having a personal goal: it’s personal. It can be sports or a hobby or crafting or machines or photography or any kind of interest or plan that requires you to get out of bed and make progress on it.
It’s not hard to create constants in life. To create variety and arcs and something that has never been here before is to live.
The Den 