I've been here for nearly eight years. Yet, I've never felt more alone.

          A big part of this website is the sense of community, of feeling like you belong, like you have a group, but I've always felt kind of . . . separated from every group. Everywhere I look, people have their tight groups of friends, where there's constant support for each other, and I hate that I do that, but I low key wish I had that, too. Don't get me wrong, I've met people years ago I'm still in touch with (GreyHeadbanding was the first person I met through Wattpad I ended up meeting in person and we still talk to this day; pallidus and drunkada are my gals) and I'm close with others (my bb verdensrommet is my absolute favorite). These are just some examples.

           Yet, I can't help but feel so stupidly lonely in the middle of all of this.

          I've been dealing with Impostor's Syndrome for a while now. I'm feeling stupidly inadequate in everything I do—writing, being a friend, posting content, interacting—and it genuinely makes me reconsider why the hell I'm still here and what I'm doing here.

          I'm still writing. I've written more during my quarantine than during the past three months combined, which is saying a lot. However, these doesn't translate in more feedback, which has been consistently decaying (in terms of the number of votes and comments per chapter) and I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. At some point, it feels like people vote without even reading the chapter I've worked so hard on, and what for? What good does that bring anyone, to the readers or even to me?

          There were people I call/called a friend who randomly stopped reading my stuff. I never get recommended. Is my work really that bad? Is the quality of my books so horrible that no one wants to actually read it and I'm just overworking myself for absolutely nothing?

          I know everyone says to not worry about the numbers. Even though I write for myself, I post it for the community, otherwise I wouldn't publish anything and nothing I write would ever see the light of day. I think the whole point of not worrying about numbers is to not create expectations of what you're going to get as soon as you hit the publish button, that the number of votes and comments doesn't necessarily correlate to the quality of your work, but it hurts. It hurts to see the numbers drop from chapter to chapter. It hurts constantly asking for feedback and getting nothing. It hurts going beyond what's human to work on these things and have people completely disregard it.

          With that being said, if anyone has any advice on how to deal with this that's not "oh, just ignore them", I'd highly appreciate it lol