Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Isn’t it funny that i can’t distinguish between an adventurous year and a low-point in my life? It either speaks to how much i trust my television’s depiction of actual life or of how boring my life has been so far that i can’t imagine me doing anything truly fun and worthwhile like visiting Europe, or traveling cross-country, or joining a rock band. I would feel like a much healthier person if i could separate the two impulses rather than merging them in a twisted soap opera amalgam. How would you suggest i make my life feel lived in? Skydive? Play chicken with Septa buses? Walk around my neighborhood carrying something obviously valuable and brace for mugging? I need something…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/02/2221271/

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My life weebles and wobbles but it just doesn’t fall down. I can’t explain it. Despite the most awful things happening, they always turn out for the best in the end.

My mother and i were essentially kicked out of our house at the end of my Junior year by the owners because they wanted to sell it. I had lived in that house for all but three years of my life. I refused to leave. My mother wanted to buy a nice little house somewhere verging on suburbia, but there was the small matter of my attending the best highschool in the state, which i would hardly have left just for senior year. In the end i convinced her to rent a house on the verges of South Philly, because i know that when she actually buys a place it should be one she loves, not one she settles for. It was all very depressing at the time, but Senior year wound up being one of the best of my life, despite all the shitty parts. I wound up living within walking distance of Gina and Anastasia, and i could actually take a shopping trip to South Street at my leisure. I had my own room on my own tiny third floor. Our kitchen was nice. I was happy.


Lots of other things have righted themselves over the years to keep my life going at its usual pace. I only got into a local university but they gave me lots of money and inexplicably wound up happy there. I almost didn’t find an apartment (chronicled at length in the first week of the archive) but wound up in a super-cheap and easily accessible one. But, life doesn’t always work out so perfectly. For some people, it doesn’t work out at all. I have too many friends who got into a local university and got zero money who are now unhappy and in debt. I know too many people who had to move home because they didn’t figure out where to live in time for the beginning of the semester. I know too many unhappy people.

Yesterday i confronted the fact that my smile might have finally become used up. For years and years i just glided through my occasional problems with a grin pasted onto my face, because they all got fixed eventually and life moved on. Suddenly i’m starting to realize that not everything fixes itself, and that i don’t know how much good cheer i really have left to get me through the bad spots


Imagine that… i’m 19 and just learning that “happily ever after” only really happens in fairy tales and first-date movies. I’ve never had to confront the possibility before; i always assumed that bad things only happened to people who weren’t thinking positively. Now i’m starting to realize that keeping a smile on my face isn’t the best defense, and that sometimes it cuts as cruelly as any situation i might be unsuspectingly plunged into. But my life is still all-good, and that scares me. No one is continually blessed. The gods only have so much attention to give.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2097862/

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So, erm, yeah. I want to drop out of school. They aren’t teaching me anything, and when i look at my course outline i don’t see myself learning very much in the future. Maybe this means i’m supposed to change my major, or transfer to a school with a credible journalism program? I’m just so tired… i went through all this college bullshit once and none of the good places accepted me so i wound up getting my nearly straight A’s here rather than anywhere i actually wanted to go. So, now i’m tied down to the people and the campus but not to the university or the program, and with every week that passes my outlook on the future gets more and more bleak. So, now i’m barely going to my classes and hating every second of it and yet i have to do my work so everything else around me suffers, including this and theatre and battle of the bands and all the rest. I want to just be a journalist, and the funny thing is, i probably won’t even be one after i graduate.


life sucks.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2080737/

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I am missing something very tangible and yet totally unknown to me. I do well in school, my financial situation is okay, i have great friends, … and yet right now i just feel trapped inside my own life. Maybe it’s just a beginning of the term depression as i see 10 fresh weeks of schoolwork stretch out in front of me, but i don’t want to play this stupid game anymore. There isn’t a liberal arts class at Drexel that can truly challenge me, and i don’t want to be a scientist. Aside from needing to learn more history in general and of art i could literally leave school today and do Journalism just as well as i’ll be able to do it in four years. I don’t need to take a public speaking class, which is the only applicable one i managed to schedule for this term because upperclassmen have scheduling preference over me. But, does it really make a difference? I glossed through every communications class i’ve had so far without even trying to work and my in-major gpa is higher than 3.5.

But, it’s not really about classes, is it? Or, it isn’t just classes. I fill my plate with so many different things because in the end i’m not doing any of them. Maybe that’s why i adore and despise the theatre so much: i can’t fake it, and i actually have to work for it. Anything else right now pales in comparison, and i am looking towards tomorrow night’s rehearsal like a beacon, because tomorrow day will be meaningless and empty. Tomorrow night i will get to have a skill, and to work to better it. Tomorrow night i will be on stage and i will feel like a person. The theatre will be empty, but it won’t matter at all.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/1888822/