Dear Self,
Dear Stranger,
Dear Citizen Who Still Feels It—
You are not imagining it.
The world is heavy;
and some days, it presses so hard against your chest
you forget how to breathe without apology.
You scroll past suffering faster than your heart can keep
up—
another detention,
another body,
another man in a suit
laughing with blood on his teeth.
And still, they ask you to stay calm.
To be rational.
To “just focus on the good.”
But you—
you have refused to go numb.
That refusal is not weakness.
It is not a flaw to be medicated or a softness to be scolded.
It is evidence.
Empathy is evidence:
Of your humanity.
Of your resistance.
Of your refusal to call injustice “just the way things are.”
You ache because you are awake.
You scream because the silence feels like suffocation.
You cry because the grief has nowhere else to go.
Do not let them shame you for this.
This is not emotional instability—
this is moral clarity.
You feel too much?
Good.
We need people who feel.
We need people who still flinch at atrocity,
who still shake at the sound of sirens,
who still pause when a headline blinks like an amber alert
for someone else’s child.
You are not overreacting; you are overhearing the soul of a nation trying to warn itself. If they call you dramatic,
remind them:
Empathy is the canary in the coal mine.
I know you are tired of screaming.
Tired of trying to outrun the grief.
Tired of asking, “Am I the only one who sees the smoke?”
No, love.
You are not the only one.
This ache you carry like a second skin?
It is not weakness;
it’s proof—
Proof that you are still human in a time designed to grind that out of you.
Proof that the spell didn’t work on you.
You still feel it when another child dies in custody.
You still cry when ICE disappears someone like a glitch in the feed.
You still rage when politicians froth at the mouth and call it freedom.
You have not been desensitized.
You have not surrendered.
You still care.
That’s the miracle.
That’s the warning.
That’s the reason they should be afraid:
Because empathy is not soft.
Empathy burns.
And you—you are flammable with it.
So if you must scream, scream.
If you must break, break open.
But do not close.
Do not give them the comfort of your silence.
Do not become manageable.
You are allowed to grieve the world
and still want to save it.
You are allowed to shake,
and still hold the match
You still feel.
That’s the whole fight.
Stay tender. Stay dangerous.
Just a girl, standing in front of a government, asking it to crumble,
—Rebecca M. Bell
@rmbellwrites