Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

isolation

by

Sometimes my life is a town with a population of just one. It’s like living in Bumblefuck. It’s a hard thing, being the only voice and face i can hear and see for miles on end is my own. There’s only so much you can be in love with yourself; after that it gets a little lonely.

On Thursday it occurred to me for just a moment that maybe it was the loneliness that was getting to me more than anything else — that last week’s forced quarantine from anyone i cared about had left me feeling empty and alone. That my happiness is just a reflection of how happy i make other people. So, for the last three days i have given myself up to the people i love, without my typical hemming and hawing about the where and why of the situation. Thursday i sat and talked about things i never usually say. Friday i spent the entire night with someone who i value so much that i sometimes forget to even see them. Last night i sat on the floor at our brother-apartment down the street and ate dinner with over a dozen of my closest friends, and for once it felt like we were all there together and not just like we were scattered around talking like any usual party. It wasn’t a party; i know because i wasn’t miserable in the least.

My question is, how long can not being miserable in the least last? Does this mean i have to surround myself with other people all the time so that i don’t have the chance to think about myself at all? I’ve seen what happens… i eventually lose track of myself inside all of the pleasantries, and i wind up locking myself in my room with my guitar for an entire weekend to sort out my feelings. But, i don’t want to do that… i don’t want to be miserable or too inundated with happiness or feeling the need to be alone or any of it. I want to feel Balanced, and to do whatever i want to do regardless of any emotional indications of desperation or otherwise at the given time.


It remains to be seen if i can manage it.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7776784/

by

The sneaky sun was just spying over my shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of what i was furtively typing down tucked behind my absent boss’s desk. Nothing special, i assure it, and clack away.


Last night was a peculiar sort of emptiness that i have every so often, and even though i feel that same vacancy inside of my life today i do not feel that same desperation. That’s what makes my misery so very complete — the desperation of knowing that nothing matters at all and that i can’t seem to change any of it.

I’m sorry if i offended anyone yesterday by saying that no one’s concerns about me mattered … i’m not trying to belittle your emotions, i’m just pointing out that not even concerned loved ones were really making a dent in the place where i was. Or, where i am. But, things about today are subtly different … suddenly, those hard fought papers and tests began to mean something to me again, because one of my teachers went beyond just assigning me a grade and a number. I suppose that’s the difference between something mattering or not … whether or not i have any context to go along with it.

The sun set back behind some clouds, so i can get back to work. That sneaky thing… brightening my day from just over my shoulder.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7673950/

by

My life has circled me back around to September. Back to my pre-Boston daily drudgery of depression. Really, what was the hospital other than an anti-Boston?: a place i have known as a part of my daily map for years, a place where my mother holds sway over everything i encountered, a place where i was left utterly disconnected from all that i am used to, and a place where i was utterly alone. Just as i was finally beginning to feel purpose and motivation, now i’m just as suddenly stuck. I feel like i don’t know anyone, or maybe that no one knows me. Or, maybe that no one knows it. One by one everything is ceasing to matter to me: theatre, class, friends, guitar. They are the slivers that slip through, and i can’t infer anything with what i’m left with. Not anything at all.

At twenty i should have a motivation, or a love, or a desire. Right now all i want is to have that sleepy black back from Friday, like an eclipse on anything else that might catch my attention. I am twenty, and i know how to get A’s; that’s all anyone ever bothered to teach me. In fact, i don’t even know how to care about them. I studied endlessly for today’s two final quizzes and felt absolutely nothing when i passed them each without much hesitation. I got my paper back with a B+ and it felt like a failure, but it wasn’t because of the B+.

Two decades and i don’t think one damn thing matters to me. My songs echo hollowly inside my head just like me voice did in the theatre tonight; i can’t seem to pick up my guitar.

I am going to sleep; tomorrow there are more motions to go through.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7656291/

by

I’m wondering if i was really ready to leave. The Hospital. High School. The Womb. I am at once an intellectual being of savvy motivation and a blubbering mess — a mess of white noise and disorientation. Talking doesn’t seem to be working. I open my mouth and words come out like twisting kudzu vines, intent on covering over my tone, intent, and meaning. My words twist themselves in fumbling green shoots spreading out from me, at once repelling and rooting me where i stand.

My associations are tangled. My mother is floating on the periphery of my life again, wheedling her way in as best as she can down my through, into my stomach, twisting my insides into hard knots that do not come undone. But i am tugging, pulling my guts this way and that hoping that something will give. No one makes sense. I can’t explain my weekend to anyone in anything but stuttering halting words. They all blankly tell me: “We were so worried.”

We. Not anyone in specific, really.

Plenty of people were worried sick about me the whole time, but i wasn’t … wasn’t worried about me, or about them, or about anything. Everyone who said that all blended into each other today. Not one of them were specific. That same wall that i thought was keeping me away from my city is suddenly all around me. I am in an aquarium tapping on the glass. Or maybe not. Maybe i’m finally outside, or maybe i was always outside. Every conversation i slide into i am separate from… the smart one, the sheltered one, the childish one, the one going absolutely fucking nowhere as fast as he can.

I want to find a way to be as numb as i feel, but there is nothing like it that i know. Except — on Friday i was coming back up from a haze of Diprovan sleep, and it was a perfect numb; i have slivers of seconds cupped in my memory while others have slid from them like mercury. Last night i wanted to feel that obscurity, that disconnected. If all you have are a scattering of pieces, you can put it back together any way you’d like.

I could actually pretend to be somewhere where i wanted to be.

Today i woke up and was back here, with my vision fuzzed and my balance a smear and several shades off of my normal self. Class was a blur, like the roadside seen from a car window. I spent five minutes of class just sitting in a bathroom stall trying to figure it out. I hung on to my perfect score in Theory class, and it didn’t feel right. I hemmed and hawed over auditioning and i did and it didn’t even seem to matter.

It was like i wasn’t even on the stage.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7655997/

by

On on empty stomach and an hour out of the hospital i somehow decided that i needed to take a walk — if for any reason then to remind myself that there is such a thing of fresh air and that most streets are longer than the distance from my hospital bed to the elevator bank. So i walked.


Comparatively, my stay in the hospital will shrink and shrink away until it is finally nothing from a distance, and i swung out each leg in a wide arc in front of the other to add to that distance as i marched down Walnut street. The distance between here and class, that i am dreading the walk of right at this instant, evaporated away and i kept walking. Charging. In my head i was at a solid jog, feeling the in out in of my breath and watching as i passed everyone around me. Honestly, i couldn’t tell you if i was jogging or not.

I got past Drexel and suddenly i found myself at the highway; it borders the Schuylkill on the west side and metro Philadelphia rises in glittering tiers on the other side. Feet planted firm on the bridge, my city looked like an artist’s rendering of itself: flat and unchanging … detailed but with no depth. I don’t know how long i stood there staring at it staring back at me before i walked towards it. I expected to come up against a translucent sort of wall where i could run my hand against the shimmering image of the city and try to press through, but before i realized it i was past it and inside the image i had observed.

Somehow it was different. I still had that flavor of hospital in me, the tiny lines of adhesive from all of the tape that held in my IVs, the ID tag on my wrist. I hadn’t thought to take it off, honestly.


Every word i said came out the way it wasn’t meant, and i’m wondering if i was really ready to leave.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7634418/