Curiosity Killed the Cat, But I’ve Got Nine Lives

June 4, 2025

I’ve been told—politely, passive-aggressively, and once via text that ended with “lol”—that I ask too many questions. This is true. I do. I dissect things the way some people crack their knuckles: habitually, compulsively, hoping it relieves a pressure I can’t name. The world burns a little more each day and I’m standing there holding a magnifying glass, not to watch it burn brighter, but to understand why it’s on fire in the first place. I ask because I want to live. Not just exist. Not just cope.

But the asking has made me lonely. Not alone, just out of sync. Like I move through things at a different rhythm. I’ve found a few people who live in this frequency, mostly online, sometimes in-person—quiet observers who ruminate too long on things like late-stage capitalism and almond milk. We’re all trying to make sense of things, but we do it softly, without raising our voices. I don’t always feel sharp enough to sit at the table with them. Still, I show up. Half-awake. Hungry for understanding.

People say “ignorance is bliss” like it’s scripture, but all I hear is: I’m too tired to care. And I get it. I used to live there. On the surface. Floating. I said “it’s not that deep” because I didn’t want to drown. But over time, I learned that the depth is where the healing begins. That what we call harmless is often just well-packaged harm. That hyper-individualism isn’t freedom—it’s loneliness in designer clothes. That we were promised community, but handed competition instead.

I can’t unknow these things now. I tried. God knows I tried.

And then one day I read something—buried in a thousand-page document, masquerading as progress. A single line that said we won’t be allowed to regulate the most powerful technology in the world for a decade. And that was it. Something snapped. Not loudly, not dramatically. Just—quietly broke. Like a hairline fracture running through the middle of me.

I shut the laptop and felt the room go still. No one else seemed to notice. The planet is suffocating, and they’re making machines that think faster than we feel—and even that is up for debate. I wanted to throw my glass of matcha on the floor. Instead, I wrote this.

The Buzz is Gone (Mostly)

I used to drink like it was medicine. A glass to loosen the grip on my anxiety. A few more to shut the whole system down. It worked until it didn’t. Until the hangovers grew fangs and my body said: no more. Until I realized I couldn’t hear myself think above the noise of “just one more.” Until the escape stopped feeling like relief and started to feel like erasure.

Now I go out and sometimes I don’t drink at all. Radical, I know. I sit with my feelings. I name them in my Notes app. I sip my overpriced Shirley temples like it’s holy water. My friends look at me funny. They ask, “Are you pregnant?” like sobriety must always be for someone else. I say, “No, I’m just trying not to disappear.”

They laugh. I smile. I wonder if they’re okay.

Capitalism makes drinking look like self-care, when really it’s more like self-suspension. A pause button for pain. But nothing changes when you’re paused. You just miss the parts of life you might’ve grown from. Or laughed at. Or cried through. I wanted to feel better, but I didn’t want to feel—and that was the contradiction that undid me.

So I changed the equation. I let myself feel, and it was a goddamn tsunami. But I’m still standing. Sometimes shaky. Sometimes strong. But always honest. That’s my new buzz.

Inconvenient Epiphanies

I’m the person at the function who accidentally derails the conversation. I start with a simple “Have you ever thought about…” and suddenly everyone’s staring into their drinks like they’re going to find the answers at the bottom. My twin calls me an idealist. I call it paying attention.

I don’t understand what more people need to see to be radicalized. But maybe it’s not about that. Maybe it’s about getting curious enough to look. Not to fix everything overnight, but to start asking better questions. What am I numbing? Who is benefiting? What could joy look like without destruction?

Small Shifts, Big Feelings

So here I am: asking too many questions, drinking way less, feeling way more. I still have bad days. I still cave sometimes. But I forgive myself, because this is what living in resistance looks like. It’s clunky and exhausting and profoundly uncool.

But it’s also liberating.

I'm not here to be the most fun person in the room. I’m here to be the most awake. That’s enough for me.

So, yeah. It is that deep.

And if you’re reading this and nodding, even just a little… you probably knew that already.