I Know About (Not) Popular

I am not popular.

I have never been popular.

I will never be popular. 

There is no engagement of consequence on social media for any of my posts. My friends look but they don’t comment. Most don’t “like”. There are no questions. Using hashtags to get the posts in front of the eyes of strangers also does little in the way of making connections. Zilch. Nada. Crickets.  

Most of what I write falls into the void of cyber space. My essays, poems, fiction, and stories don’t find an audience. So they don’t evoke a response. There is no connection. Maybe the ancient aliens in the black hole of time will one day find my words floating around them and stop to read, finding a writer they can identify with, but he will be long dead.

I have wasted so much time wishing and hoping and trying, only to realize I am enacting the definition of crazy. The response is always the same. Yet still, I periodically insist on running around this loop of discouragement. 

The depression and sadness it causes me is real. And it’s real for others. In that I am not alone. But I am the subject of this writing, and I can’t bear the emotional strain, the mental weight. I can’t figure out how to just put an essay or an Instagram post out into the world and let it land, breathe, live. I desire a response. I long for it. Just like an actor needs applause. I want to engage with an audience that doesn’t seem to find me interesting.

I feel like a failure: worthless, unworthy, and less-than. I will never be a sensation. I often say being invited to the party is enough. But I will never get the invitations to the parties that I will then decline.

I might be a selfish, self-involved, non-empathetic person who thinks he deserves more than others, and that he should be recognized for his trivial Instagram posts and descriptive word choices in his blog essays and his…etc, etc.

But, still…

I am not popular. 

I have never been popular. 

I will never be popular. 

©️MichaelRohrer