Crisis Of Life

Existential Choose Your Own Adventure
Welcome to Your Life

Emma Brousseau

You have just been born. Congratulations(?)
To continue, click next.


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You have just died. Sorry for your loss(?)
To continue, click next.


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After being born, you became a person with choices. This was inevitable, and now you have to make them. You are free to make them.

Please click next to continue (if you'd like).


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After a few years, you start ascribing certain meanings to certain sounds. With this new language, you are able to describe yourself at two years old.

To say you are thirsty, press Choice 1.
To say you are hungry, press Choice 2.


Choice 1

Because you are two years old, there are many things you don't understand yet. One night, you wake up in the dark. Shadows seem to crawl up your walls, but they don't bother you much. You're haunted by other things.
You want something. Maybe water. Maybe your mother. Maybe something you've never seen before. You start to cry, but no one comes.

Click next.


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Your mother eventually comes into your room and calms you down with lullabies and soft blankets. You never find out what you wanted. Maybe you'll never find out.
Several years later, you're seven and she asks you why you're upset. This time it's because you've gotten bored and haven't cried for something in a while.

To stop crying and move on, click Choice 1.
To continue crying and know that emotions are an inescapable part of life, click Choice 2.


Choice 2

You're fifteen now, and it's time to make some big choices. But you decide not to decide just yet. You've made all sorts of choices in the past and who knows what you'll do in the future. The most important thing to you is authenticity, to give each of your choices meaning and to make them freely.
One day, your science teacher asks you to stay after class to 'have a chat' with them.
You watch your classmates stream out the door until you're standing alone. Your teacher clears their throat.
"I've been going over some of your test scores-"
You feel your throat tighten. You can't breathe.
"-and you are consistently at the top. I was wondering if you've considered testing up a grade? You'd be able to graduate early."
You shake your head, though it's still reeling. "I don't know..."
"Take your time, think it over," your teacher says. "No matter what you decide, you're going to do great."
You go home that night to your family and tell them the news. Your father thinks you should go for it, at least take the test. Your mother also encourages you, but mentions how difficult it would be to leave your friends behind as well as take on harder coursework. You older sister tells you that you have to take the test, and your little brother babbles encouragement. Or warnings. Who knows? He's only 6 months old.
You decide to take the test. You pass and can move up a grade if you'd like.

Click next


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Should you move up a grade?
Do you want to?
Your parents encourage and warn you in equal measure. Your teachers all seem to smile knowingly at you. When you tell your friends, most of them congratulate you like you've already decided to do it.
But you would miss them.
And the work will be harder.
You're not sure you would be able to handle it all.

To move up a grade, click Choice 1.
To stay where you are, click Choice 2.



Choice 1

You move up a grade and life is good for a while. You make new friends. You do the work. Still, you can't help but wonder where all your time went. You used to have time for being in the school musical and playing with your little brother. But now you have to finish your calculus homework in time to study for your geography exam in time to prepare for your history presentation.
You're exhausted, but you don't feel like you can go back to the way things were.
You try to push through.

Click next.


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It doesn't work.
You start to fall behind in all of your classes, and the teachers start to notice. It's simply too much pressure.
You've started to lose yourself, and your brain is too stressed to make decisions.
One day, one of your new friends asks you what your favorite color is.
You don't know.
You break down and ask your principle if you can go back to your old grade. They let you, and your old friends rejoice. Your parents admit their relief. Apparently, they haven't seen you for more than an hour at a time lately.
You go back feeling weightless. You can do whatever you want, whatever that is.

Click next.


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At sixteen, you're doing pretty well. You have good friends, even a few best friends. You do everything together, and you're almost never alone. Still, you can't help but wonder if they're affecting you too much.
One of your friends keeps cheating on tests, keeps wanting you to help them cheat.

To help them out, click Choice 1.
To report them to a teacher, click Choice 2.
To put off making the decision and start avoiding your friend, click Choice 3.


Choice 3

You've been avoiding your friend for about a week now, but it's starting to backfire. Your other friends are starting to side with them. They all confront you in the cafeteria one day.
"How could you do this?"
"They needed your help!"
"You're so selfish. They would have helped you!"
You can't respond to everyone at once and get overwhelmed.
You start avoiding all of your friends. After a few weeks, they do the same to you. You now sit alone at lunch and have to pass their laughing table everyday.
You've never been this alone before.
At home, you eat dinner with your family before going directly upstairs. They probably don't want to talk to you either.
You start to get stuck inside your own head.

Click next.


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You are so alone.


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You are so alone.


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You are so alone.


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You are so alone.


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You are so alone.


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You are so alone.


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What are you going to do about it?


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You're alone.
You could get comfortable with it. Eventually. You could reject it. Eventually.
But you will know that it's there, everyday in the back of your head.
What will you do?

You could start being a loner, a badass, a person who doesn't need anyone else. Or you could start over, make new friends, and make a promise to reach out to other lonely people in this world, to be kind to them. Or you could choose to make choices in the moment, to not define yourself one way or another but to live everyday according to the moment.

To become a loner and a badass, Choice 1.

To start making new friends and spreading kindness, click Choice 2.

To live in the moment, click Choice 3.




Choice 3

Authenticity is the most important thing to you.
You make choices on a whim most of the time, only taking care when decisions become bigger. Like what you'll do after graduation.
As you approach this decision, you rebuild a friend group, some new some old. And they become your life once again. Except for when you need to be alone. You've grown to like it somehow. Solitude feels something like acceptance.

A few years pass, and college decisions are in. You applied to a few schools and were accepted to all of them. However, your friends have already decided to go other places. You'll be alone again. If you do go, your mother wants you to attend her alma mater, where you received a rather large scholarship.
Or you could stay in town and get a job. Your family has some connections at the local church. You could get a job in their office, get some experience while you decide what you'd like to do with your life.

These aren't decision that can be made on a whim, but you have to make them.

To go to college, a large state school that your mom attended, click Choice 1.
To get the office job in town, click Choice 2.


Choice 1

You arrive to campus with a car full of stuff and a heart full of worry.
How will you make friends with these strangers?
Will anyone like you?
What will classes be like?
Your mom exits the car first and takes a big breath. She knows this place, leading you and your father around like a tour guide as she remembers her years here.
"...And there's the spot I used to sit and study. You make sure to study. College is harder than it looks. The top floor of that dorm is haunted, just wait til after midnight. There's where my friends and I went skinny dipping," she said, pointing to a wide fountain. The water is clear, spurting out of several cherubs' mouths, but the fountain itself is fairly shallow. You make a face, and your mother noticed.
"Okay, we didn't go skinny dipping, but we did jump in on our last day of classes. Every year."
You don't know why but you vow to do the same. Just as soon as you find some friends.

Your parents leave too soon, and you find yourself alone after orientation. You find yourself alone to some other alone people. You start talking. Turns out being alone can be a place to start a relationship. Soon enough, you're chatting about where you'll all live next year, together of course. You start to talk to people in your classes as well, once they start, and find both common ground and arguments to pursue. You like college.
The school year continues, and you find yourself enjoying two of your gen. ed. classes above the others: philosophy and developmental psychology. You've always loved children and could see yourself as a teacher one day. And you also like exploring new thoughts in your philosophy class, thoughts you've never thought before.
Eventually, it comes time to choose a major.

To become an education major, click Choice 1.
To become a philosophy major, click Choice 2.


Choice 2

To become a philosophy major, you must take a class called Intro to Existential Philosophy.
The readings and discussions baffle you, open your eyes.
One day, you read a passage by Albert Camus.
"The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor."
A friend of yours is reading the same passage and leans over your shoulder to make a joke."This reading is a futile and hopeless labor."
You laugh, at first.
And then you think about it later that night, with a chilled breeze coming in through your window.
What if this really is futile?
What matters, anyway?
If you do our assignments?
How well you do in college?

You could drop out of college.
The thought sends a thrill of fear down your spine.
Why would it matter, in the big picture, if you dropped out? You don't even dislike college, but you could do without the work.
Would it matter?
Does anything you do matter?
Would it matter if you spent whole weeks doing nothing?
Would it matter if you stopped talking to your friends?
Would it matter if you stopped keeping in touch with your family?
Would it matter if you stopped getting out of bed?




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Would it matter if you quit this game right now?


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You continue playing the game.
You continue playing the game of life.

You still like philosophy.
One day, there's a new person in your class that keeps catching your eye every time the professor repeats themselves. Which is often.
They follow you out of class one day and ask to talk.

Click next.


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The two of you sit on a bench outside. It's a bright, clear day, and you can feel the sun warming your skin through your clothes.

You close your eyes and listen to the person next to you. They don't mind.
When you sneak a peek at them later, they're doing the same thing, leaning back on the bench, completely relaxed.
They ask you so many questions, about philosophy and your family and yourself.
You answer them all without opening your eyes and ask your own questions. You can hear the smile in their answers.

The sun goes down.
It feels like only a few minutes ago you could feel the sun burning through your closed eyelids, but it's actually been several hours since you two began talking.

You make a habit to wait for each other after class.

Click next.


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One day, you feel them turn to you, with your eyes closed with the sun again, and they ask something you don't know the answer to.

"Does it bother you?"
"Does what bother me?" You respond, not sure where they're going.
"Life."
You pause. There are several things that bother you about life, like war and torture and even natural death. Life can be joyful, but life scares you more often than not. "Sometimes."

"I'm terrified of it," they respond.
You open your eyes.

To say "Me too," click Choice 1.
To scoff and change the subject, too fearful to admit your fear, click Choice 2.


Choice 1

There's something magical about another person that thinks as you do, that feels as you do.
You start hanging out more and more.
You start liking them more and more.
One day, they make a joke about philosophy or trying to find a parking spot or death. You forget it in the next second, but you laugh anyway. And you love them. You love the way they grin, all teeth, the way they wink at you from across rooms and across benches and two inches from your face. One day, you close those two inches, and find that they love you too.

Click next.


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At 22, you get engaged on graduation day.
At 28, you decide you want children.
You have four of them, a boy then a girl then a boy then a girl.
You love them very much and help them make decisions until they discover the freedom and terror that comes with making their own choices.
At 33, you decide to grow your hair long and do so.
At 34, you decide you hate it, and cut it all off.
At 37, you decide you want to live in the country.
You move that spring and open your windows to clean air and clean grass and clean dirt every morning.
At 46, you decide you hate funerals after burying your parents within a month of each other.
You decide you'd like to be cremated.
At 55, you decide you love your spouse more every day.
You realize it's been that way since the day you met, and you promise yourself it will always be that way.
You two renew your marriage vows that summer, in the mountains where there's still a chill in the air, but birds sing. All of your children are present.
Your spouse tells you that they love you more every day.
You cry because you know.
You know the feeling, and you know them.
And they know you.
At 64, you realize that you've never felt so alive and so afraid and so joyful. You realize that maybe you've felt that way for a long time. You silently thank every person you've ever met, every person you've ever loved, for being in your life.
At 78, you decide not to tell your children your desire to be cremated.
Your spouse wasn't cremated, and your children visit their grave often.
As do you.
At 78, you decide you are more alone than you've ever been before. Whether you could ever fathom other people's thoughts, or other people could ever fathom you, you decide you don't care.
At 78, you know you do care.
At 83, you're very sick.
Your children visit you, taking turns, and you decide that you can't put them through this much longer. But you want to look back at your life, one more time. Did you make the right choices?
You decide, lying in bed and shivering with fever, that you don't know what 'right' means. You decide to ask a different question.
Did you make meaningful choices?



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Did you make meaningful choices?


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Did you make meaningful choices?


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Did you make meaningful choices?


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Did you make meaningful choices?


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Did you make meaningful choices?


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Did you make meaningful choices?


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Are you making meaningful choices?