But I have to stamp those words out, because they are telling a warped version of the truth

It's not that.

It's not "caring too much". There is not enough caring in the world, one can't care too much.

The feeling that says those words is trying to warn me, but there's no easy simple digestible sentence to explain it.

It's like the feeling you get when you spend too long outside in the cold and you won't stop shivering or your teeth won't stop clattering

It's like wanting to breathe, take in a great big deep breath, but your nose is stuffed, or your throat hurts every time you suck in too much air.

I might curse the cold, the sickness, or the social disaster that makes me feel that way. But fighting nature - literal or human - is a losing battle. There's plenty of things I can fight. There's plenty of things I have fought, sometimes literally. But not that.

I might have no choice but to live in a hostile world. (I don't, in fact.)

But the last thing I want to be is turn hostile myself, even if it's to fight back against what's unfair. At best, I'll hurt myself. At worst, I'll hurt others. I have - both counts. I'm lucky to still be around. There's no limit to the hostility that can fill you, even if you feel that you are (or even 100% completely are) justified.

I don't like being exposed to these disasters. Especially not the social disasters, the most preventable of all, the ones that come from minds rather than phenomena. It's completely okay to hate it when it happens. There's a lot of people I hate!
But I can't become hostile, I can't become a disaster of my own. That's the part with all the harm and the hurt. As stereotypical as it sounds, that's what it's like when the hate consumes you. When all you want to do is destroy it.

No, not when there's so many people that I could care for instead. When I could make this meaningful and even fun. Even if it's just liking a chost or sending a donation. Even if it's in the tiniest of little ways and you never get to see a sign of it.

...

Honestly, the most tragic thing in all of this is realizing all of that, and my name is Tempest. A name I picked online because it's a convenient English word to represent the etymology of my given name. I'll never not be Tempest, but I don't have to be a disaster.