My thumb is bleeding.
Not literally. But it feels like it should be. I've been typing on this cracked phone screen for fourteen hours straight, and my thumb is cramped into a claw that won't straighten. The screen protector peeled off months ago, and now there's a spider web of cracks across the top corner that cuts into my vision when I'm trying to write.
But I keep typing.
4 views. That's what my latest chapter has after being live for six hours. Chapter 47 of a story I've been writing for eight months. Eight months of my life, 200,000 words, and four people bothered to click.
One of them was me, checking if it uploaded properly from my phone.
The other three? Gone in twelve seconds. Average reading time: twelve seconds. Not even long enough to finish the first paragraph. Not long enough to meet the character I spent three hours developing. Not long enough to care.
But I keep typing.
My neck feels like it's made of broken glass from looking down at this screen. My family thinks I'm just scrolling social media when they see me hunched over my phone at 9 AM. They don't know I'm building worlds. They don't know I'm crafting dialogue that makes me cry. They don't know I'm dying inside every time I hit "publish" and watch my story disappear into the void.
"Still playing on your phone?" my dad asked yesterday. Playing. Like my dreams are a game. Like the characters living in my head are toys. Like the eight hours I spent on that chapter was just... playing.
I wanted to scream. Instead, I said, "Yeah, just playing."
Because explaining hurts more than lying.
This is my seventh account. Seven. Each time I thought maybe a fresh start would change things. Maybe this username would attract readers. Maybe this bio would make them care. Maybe starting over would erase the failure trailing behind me like a shadow.
Account 1: 12 followers after six months. Deleted in shame.
Account 2: 8 followers after three months. Deleted in despair.
Account 3: 3 followers who never commented. Deleted in silence.
Account 4: 15 followers - my record high. They all disappeared after chapter 10. Deleted in heartbreak.
Account 5: Two months of complete silence. Deleted in agony.
Account 6: Different genre, different style, same result. Deleted in defeat.
Account 7: This one. 6 collections. Half of them are me using family phones because seeing "3 collections" felt less pathetic than "1."
But even fake numbers can't fill the hole in my chest.
The notification sound makes me flinch now. It used to make me hope. Now I know it's just spam. Another bot leaving generic praise to promote their own story. For that split second before I read it, I think maybe someone finally saw me. Maybe someone understood what I was trying to say.
But it's never real. It's never human. Just code pretending to have the feelings I'm desperate to find.
I applied for contracts. Both times, rejection. No feedback. No "try this" or "work on that." Just form letters that might as well say "you don't exist."
"Unfortunately, your work doesn't meet our standards."
What standards? What am I missing? Is my writing terrible? Are my characters flat? Is my pacing wrong? My grammar? My genre choice? My tags? My summary? My soul?
TELL ME. Give me something to fix. Give me hope that I can improve. This silence is killing me in slow motion.
I see other stories with thousands of followers, hundreds of comments, contract offers. Authors celebrating milestones I can't even dream of reaching. And I wonder what cosmic joke made them special while I remain invisible.
I update every day. Same time. No matter what. Sick? I update. Exhausted? I update. Crying so hard I can barely see the screen? I update.
Consistency. That's what all the advice says. Be consistent. Build an audience. Engage with readers.
But you can't engage with ghosts.
My battery is dying. It's always dying. I can't afford a new phone, so I'm chained to this cracked screen and dying battery, racing against time to finish chapters before everything goes black. Sometimes I lose hours of work because my phone died and I forgot to save. Sometimes I cry harder over lost words than most people cry over lost loved ones.
Because these words are all I have.
My family stopped asking about my writing. At first, Mom would say, "How's your story going?" with genuine interest. Now she just looks sad when she sees me typing. Like she's watching me waste away chasing something that doesn't exist.
"Maybe it's time to think about something more practical," she said last week.
Practical. The word tastes like poison. What's practical about giving up the only thing that makes you feel alive? What's practical about abandoning the characters who feel more real than the people around you?
But I can't pay rent with dreams. I can't eat plot twists. I can't survive on the hope that someday, someone will care about my stories.
The job interview is tomorrow. For work that will drain whatever creativity I have left. For a life that feels like death in slow motion. For surrendering to a world that doesn't value what I do.
But I have to eat. I have to live. Even though living without writing doesn't feel like living at all.
I look at my story statistics and feel hollow. 47 chapters. 200,000 words. Eight months of my life poured into characters who exist only in my mind because no one else cares enough to meet them.
I know their fears, their dreams, their secrets. I know how they laugh and what makes them cry. I've lived in their world longer than I've lived in my own reality. But to everyone else, they're just words on a screen that aren't worth twelve seconds of attention.
The loneliness is suffocating. I sit in my room at 4 AM, surrounded by stories no one will read, and I feel like I'm disappearing. Like if I stopped writing tomorrow, nothing would change. The world would keep spinning. The platform would keep promoting other stories. My absence would be another silence in a universe that's already too quiet.
But I can't stop. Writing is the only thing that ever made sense. The only time I feel like myself. Even if no one else sees value in what I create, I need to keep creating or I'll lose the last piece of who I am.
So here I am. 4 AM. Phone at 15% battery. Thumb cramping. Eyes burning. Heart bleeding.
Starting chapter 48.
Every truck on the street looks tempting - not for harm, but for escape. For some isekai portal to a world where stories matter. Where writers are valued. Where eight months of work means something more than four views and twelve seconds of attention.
But this isn't an isekai. This is real life. This is my real pain, my real tears, my real desperation typed out on a cracked phone screen while the world sleeps.
"One day I'll definitely kill you all," I whisper to the empty room, to the silence that's swallowing my dreams, to the platform that treats my art like spam.
Not with violence. Never with violence. With vindication. With success so undeniable you'll all wonder how you missed me. With stories so powerful you'll regret every day you spent ignoring them.
But tonight, with tears on my phone screen and hope running on empty, that someday feels impossibly far away.
I type the first sentence of chapter 48 anyway.
Because giving up would kill me faster than the silence ever could.
And maybe - just maybe - someone out there needs these words as much as I need to write them.
Maybe someone like me is reading this at 4 AM, crying over their own four views, wondering if they're the only one who feels this invisible.
You're not alone.
We're not alone.
Even if it feels like we are.
[Word count: 1,247. Written entirely on mobile. Battery at 12%. Heart at 0%. Hope at... maybe 1%?]