Aurora 2022-Final

Braden Kelsey

Braden Kelsey

18th, nearing sleep, when I got a text message from a cute girl asking if I’d go to Kroger with her. She’d been at work all day and needed groceries, but it was 12 a.m. in Terre Haute—not exactly the Disney Land of Indiana—so I went. We had previously dated for awhile a year or so before, but she was older and went off to college, so we kept things short. After shopping, she offered a movie in her room, and while that movie was an insufferable DreamWorks flick, I appreciated the company. After the movie was over, we sat up in her bed talking, before she said she was going to take a shower. I laid there for an hour, saying “here she comes, here she comes,” but she didn’t. I fell asleep, and after however long—long enough for it to be close to sun-up, I went looking for her. Where did I find her? Asleep on the couch upstairs. Ouch. No fault of hers—I was a sleazy kid that got attached too easily—but as you could imagine my ego was in ruins, so I threw a blanket on her and went for a drive. I drove the city top to bottom, playing my “This Will Not Make You Feel Better” playlist. Her house was on the upper north side, though to be fair everything was north of where I lived. I ended up down south by my old middle school, and it would be at that adjacent Speedway that I’d buy my first nicotine product—the infamous JUUL. Back then, every hit sent my mind racing, filling it with nausea—yes—but a good nausea. Those head rushes were like becoming extremely drunk for just a few seconds, until my blood would filter it out and I could do it again. It was wonderful, but by the time I turned 19, those head rushes had vanished, and I was stuck with a dependence no weaker than the one for air. * Tucked deeply within the human brain is the mesolimbic pathway—a cluster of neurons manipulated by the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine shapes behaviors, and is released when undergoing something necessitating survival. When dwarves are ambushed by orcs, dopamine kicks in like a hammer. When a drug like alcohol is present, certain neurons in the brain are suppressed, creating a feeling of joy and satisfaction. Turns out humans like a solid floor of joy and satisfaction. Problem is, there’s no ceiling. No person has ever had enough joy—Gollum had the ring for 600 years, and after he lost it, went through torture and death to hold it again. See his final smile when holding the ring to his eye, as he disappears into the lava of Mount Doom. The use of

outside substances—booze, cigarettes, that first cup of coffee or a magical ring of power—can create releases of dopamine up to ten times more powerful than those occurring naturally in the brain. And while power certainly isn’t a physical drug, it’d hardly take a historian to know its addictive allure. The pain of this lies not in the fact that one is actively harming oneself, but that despite what one wants, they can’t change—their body is a prison. Bilbo can find all the remedies he likes—his residence of Rivendell was a One Ring rehabilitation center, surrounding him with as much joy and peace of mind as his body allowed, and protecting the facility is a magical barrier through which no evil may enter. Regardless, his body will always want it—so much so that it will act beyond his wishes and lash out at his family if it means it can have its dopamine—that sense of safety—once more. Frodo would walk for half a year to the center of a volcano and still refuse this loss of feeling secure. * I got married two months before my 19th birthday. It didn’t work out. But I’m done talking about it, because talking about important things requires vulnerability, and that may as well be the arch nemesis of dopamine. But that’s what nicotine is for, that second of refuge. That’s what that late night joint far away in the home office was for, what marriage was for—a means of survival. It was during our last Christmas together that my wife gave me a small paperback copy of The Fellowship of the Ring . It was just larger than a modern phone, the first of a three part box set, and the words near the binding were a nightmare to read. I still have the copy—its spine has creases like old skin. I would later get the cover, the Doors of Durin , tattooed on my arm. Reading it had the childhood nostalgia of course, but the writing—it was the first time something as mechanical as craft made me cry. It felt like finding the writing you always wish you’d been able to do—like discovering how to say the things you were too blind to find yourself. Every word was in the right spot; it was like medicine to me. When I reached The Two Towers , I saw Frodo and Sam tame Gollum in writing. I never understood as a child why Frodo pitied Gollum. There’s a reason that things like Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholic Anonymous and DAA—support groups and sponsors and speakers—are all so effective at reaching their target audience. People who know pain understand people in

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