Start of Life Crisis
This is the crisis you commonly undergo in your first few moments of being a person. For nine blissful months, you were living it up in a dark, warm place that was feeding you chicken sandwiches and jalapeño poppers through a tube at all hours of the day. You didn’t have to do anything but sit around and listen to reruns of Seinfeld through the fleshy walls of your sick crib and now, all of a sudden, you’ve been evicted and forced to enter into the bright, gross-smelling new world. Nobody even warned you that pooping was a thing! You’re so upset about this new situation that you can’t help but cry out in your garbled freshly-birthed voice. Why can’t they just put you back in? You will cope with the stress by spending the first several years of existence crying and barfing on yourself.
Quarter of a Quarter Life Crisis
This is the crisis that hits you at age 6. Being a baby wasn’t so bad. You just sat around all day in your diaper eating shit you found on the ground. But now? You’ve got responsibilities up the wazoo. You have to be potty-trained, you have to eat vegetables and, hey, get this! You have to start going to a glorified prison called “school!” All of a sudden you’re being forcibly taken away from your mom, your doting personal servant, and forced to learn the alphabet. This is ridiculous! You will cope by throwing tantrums before bedtime and refusing to share your trucks with Jeremy from kindergarten.
Half-Quarter Life Crisis
This crisis will occur around ages 13-18. In retrospect, you were having a blast as a little kid- just running around and eating Twinkies and peeing your pants with reckless abandon. You’ve grown up a lot since then emotionally, so you know life is not all pull-ups and Hostess snacks. You have acne and hormones and you hate your mom. It seems like everyone at school is growing up and getting hot before you. Some don’t get so self-conscious during gym that they have to change in the handicap stall. You feel so ugly, underdeveloped, and weird… is this just what life is? Nobody else could possibly feel this bad. You will cope by listening to Linkin Park and Radiohead in your room and journaling about how nobody will ever understand what you’re going through.
Quarter Life Crisis
This crisis will occur somewhere in your early to mid-twenties. You definitely don’t miss high school, but you have to admit life was easier then. Back in those days, your biggest concern was whether or not Sally would agree to go to prom with you (she did not). Now? You have bills, student loans, multiple ex-girlfriends that have blocked you on social media, and your parents call every day to yell at you about getting a better job. You’re always exhausted, even after a full night’s sleep. It’s hard to balance a full-time job at Walgreen’s with your active social life (read: going out with the same three people every weekend and blacking out at Applebee’s) and you’re really wondering if this is what life is- shitty and boring? You will cope with this by doing cocaine.
Mid-Life Crisis
Your forties have arrived, and so has a whole slew of new medical problems that you never thought you’d be old and gross enough to have. Is carpal tunnel even a real condition? It must, because your hand bones feel like they’re constantly being squeezed by Andre the Giant. It’s ironic because you have all the same financial troubles you had in your twenties, but now you’ve got to pay for Nexium and Atkins diet bars. You’re not ready to be old and gross, so you will resist the inevitability of aging with all your might! It’s time to buy a VR headset and go to techno clubs with your son. You will cope with your fear of old age by dressing in what you assume is the hot fashion of today and sporadically doing cocaine.
Three-Quarters Life Crisis
You could be anywhere between 65 and 90. At this point, who even cares? You certainly stopped counting after you started qualifying for the seniors’ discount menu at IHOP. You have arthritis in places you didn’t even know had the capability of being arthritic. Your grandkids never call you. Your eyebrow hairs average in at around 4 inches long. You’ve certainly never felt grosser, and you scoff at your past self’s crises because they’ve got nothing on the crap you’re going through now. You will cope by yelling at strangers in restaurants and taking 3-hour baths. Occasionally, you will do cocaine.
End of Life Breakthrough
You could die at literally any moment now and honestly? You’re fully okay with that. You lived a very long life and even though in the moment the hard times felt like an ongoing crisis, you wouldn’t trade in your experiences for the world because they shaped your life into something interesting. You sit in your hospital bed, diaper full and deeply content. In a way, this is just like how you entered the world- gross, shitting yourself, and surrounded by large people that you can’t really see but this time, you’re not scared of what’s to come. You made it through life and sure, you had about 5,000 nervous breakdowns along the way but that all feels so long ago. You can’t wait to sit down in the martini bar of heaven with God and tell him all about the shit you got into and all the cocaine you did.