Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Philly

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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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I feel like staying at Drexel is like settling for obscurity. I will never be a rock star at Drexel. I will never be a Journalist at Drexel. I will never matter at Drexel. Is this defeatist? Maybe… but i don’t think so. I know i matter, but i just don’t know if i can make it happen here. Maybe that’s why i like the internet so much: for its ability to let me touch down in every city and town in the united states. What it comes down to is that i’m tied to Philadelphia, and the mere thought of leaving almost sends me into a fit of tears. If i transferred i would have to go to another city, and not just the outskirts of Philly or New Jersey. So, it might never happen. Justin is working on his transfer right now; last year in march i said i’d go with him. I still want to.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2098373/

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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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There was this second as i was walking home last night where i stopped and looked up at the stars and my vision just zoomed in on the sky so that i couldn’t see anything else at all. I just stood there, with my head turned up to the sky.


I think i was trying to get mugged.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/1957725/

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Yesterday as i was coming home from working at the coffee shop, i saw what i thought was a 2 dimensional cut out of a man in a business suit. I wasn’t exactly sure why there’d be such a decoration in the middle of Suburban Station, but it struck me as whimsical and i continued to walk by when out of the corner of my eye i saw the 2d-man move. As it turned out, he was in the middle of his daily commute, just like myself or anyone else i walked past. But when i looked at him at first, he had no character to him… his edges weren’t rounded and his face was struck in a single expression held as long as my glance lasted.

I think it was just the light. Have you ever noticed that some teevee shows look more like sets with people on them than others? Two that come to mind are Roseanne and Home Improvement. Either because of the lighting or the film used, the actors on both of those television shows never seemed to be a part of their scenery to me … they stuck out just like an actor on stage does, and the burden of suspending disbelief fell upon you as the viewer. Other shows like Cheers and Friends make the environment as much as a character as the actors, and so it seems as though we’re actually watching people living their lives, even though we’re fully aware that it’s a sitcom. In this case, the sitcom has helped us suspend our disbelief.

Even though the man was wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase, he stood out against the surroundings just like a magnet on a refrigerator. Was it something about him? Or, was it something about me?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/1846001/