Nicole D'Settemi

I woke up to remember the good times and the bad. I know one can't really exist without the other, so I always remind myself that life isn't about hanging onto memories, it's about experience. It's about learning from experience and understanding how to use it. It's about being intelligent enough to turn memories into golden moments, no matter what they may be.

Addiction is like swimming in an ocean for a very long time...drowning really, ready to give in. You're so tired, but you keep swimming, and then you start REALLY drowning. It's like trying to grasp for a breath, one tiny inhalation to keep going, and you get the one breath, but you are near death, suffocation, and each time you still manage to get one small breath in to keep going. Until finally either you break free, you swim away from that magnificent grip, that monster lurking that keeps pushing your head under, or you have drowned. You died. It's that simple.

When men perform egocentric activities, we tag it and brush it off like 'oh he's a guy, they have egos, '- as if to say women don't. Well, guess what? One should HOPE we have egos too. After All, without an ego, the only thing left is the ID. Primary ANIMAL instincts. You know what we call people with only an ID? Psychopaths.

The most interesting thing about writing a memoir is that people read it and automatically, think they have you pegged. You know? It would appear, an open book to your soul. But, I penned my own a decade ago. It was about a specific time. I'm not even the same person from one minute to the next, let alone a decade ago. So whatever you think you know about me, whatever crazy you've decided I am or fit, just remember... it's probably worse! '

The issue is when you mess with someone who is crazy, you might as well cancel the ride. Because there is nowhere left to drive someone like that.

In the Addictarium I learned one thing; life is about who we think we are, lessons are learned when we stop thinking negatively about ourselves. I learned that at the bottom of all addictions was the need to be loved, the bottom of all misery, the bottom of disaster. All of it led to love. Not being loved. Wanting love. Loving and not having it return. That's what every moment in history boiled down to. Acceptance...understanding- not feeling it, and therefore not feeling loved.

I always felt in a sort of, liquefied state. If that makes sense? I think it's interesting because I grew up near such a renowned, gorgeous and enigmatic landmark. Is it possible that nature interferes with and/or conditions us? I think so. At the end of the day, we are organic, we are offspring from the earth, sophisticated bacteria if you will. So, why wouldn't moods and traits, characteristics, emotions, habits, thought-patterns- why wouldn't all of that be affected by nature? Growing up near water, I sincerely believe, affected me in SOME way.

Stockholm Syndrome. […] It was a sort of desperate blind love. And loyalty. Loyalty and love geared towards the abuser.- 'It's a response to fear, an admission within of defeat, '- I'd read. But, honestly? I thought it to be more than that. It was the thrill of having something to submit to, become utterly powerless to. A sinister sort of seduction. You knew in your heart it would end badly, yet you just couldn't stop yourself from giving [B.K1] into that primal urge, the way prey finally accepts its fate, 'take me, ' it says, as the [B.K2] predator sinks its teeth in.

Because life-to be alive, existence—was power in itself, and death (not sodomy) was the ultimate submissive act. Everything else was just revolving around life and death. That was why people became obsessed with power, control, let fear drive them. Fear of the unknown, and ultimately of death, were the things that life revolved around. It was sort of ironic, life revolving around death, and vice versa. Like, with everything else, with one came the inevitable blossoming of its opposite.

There were days when the saturation of death, and the realities of life, became too great. Days where I felt suffocated, heavy. I'd try to grasp for a breath, and I'd fail. Yet, just in the nick of time, I would somehow, once again, be resuscitated. The world grew dark, cold. A black cloud looming over everything that I saw. People evolved into monsters-caricatures, and EVERYTHING was frightening, everybody was a predator! The world transformed, and I would choke. Plumes of dust representing reality, as they sought an exit from my mouth, as I wheezed, and I gasped. Reality was choking me, saturating me with its heaviness. Control? None whatsoever. Not over things, not over people. No, that was Life's illusion; control was the magic trick. The lack of control, I was truly speaking of, was the inevitable-death. The one thing that tied to everything, everyone. Every neurotic thought, every impulse. It was Death. The Random Act.

Part of me hated technology because to me technology was a mother fucker that was eating this world alive. It was all part of the machine, the deadening of the human spirit, and I wouldn't allow it. I had to see the world for what it was, drain it of all its illusion, because what lingered beneath? The wild, untamed beast, and in the end it would eat us all. That was something nobody could stop, not with any amount of money, or material things. Nothing that was part of physical reality could prevent death. So, to me, people were absurd, robotic, already dead. Buying fancy cars, big homes, the latest electronics, and all for what? The excuse was convenience. I need this. It makes things easier. Yet, while comfort may have been at the surface, the real thirst for these things, for material possessions, was to feel in control and to feel part of.

I couldn't bear the thought of what drugs could do. I wanted to cry, I felt the anguish, the pain, of all that was alive and suffering right then! How this world was dying, all of us, this lost generation. The Lost Children, The Lost Children, an echo drilled so penetratingly, so pervasively, in my head. I sucked in a breath, and now? I was choking.

To be someone filled with neurosis, anxiety, and paranoia is to inevitably be someone who is a little obsessed with pain and death. Control, death, time and the other elements aforementioned, all intersect in some way. So, ironically; it is for this reason that I have found my way to live; by embracing death, accepting death, being a little in love with it, welcoming it and no longer fearing it; I have indeed found my way to live.