The Last Notification

Lina’s phone buzzed again — a tiny tremor against the desk — but she didn’t even blink.

She had stopped checking hours ago.

The likes, the comments, the endless stream of emojis; they flooded her screen like a river she was slowly drowning in. Every photo she posted, every witty caption she wrote, every carefully posed smile... all of it fed the machine, and the machine fed her in return.

For a while, it felt enough.

She remembered the beginning, the sweet rush of validation. A simple post — a picture of her coffee and a book — had gotten her first hundred likes. Someone she admired had even shared it. For the first time in years, she felt seen. As if she had carved out a small space in the enormous, indifferent world and declared, I exist. Look at me.

And they did look.

They looked at her travels, her breakfasts, her late-night "candid" shots by fairy-lit windows. They looked at the perfectly edited versions of Lina, and they loved her for it. Or at least, they loved the idea of her she served them daily.

But as the months passed, the love became a cage.

She noticed it first in tiny ways. The tightness in her chest when a post didn't perform as well. The frantic retakes of photos because her hair wasn’t quite right. The long nights spent scrolling through other people's feeds, comparing, shrinking, feeling less and less.

Behind every carefully curated image, her real life grew more hollow.

She stopped calling her friends — easier to send a quick DM. She stopped visiting her family — too busy creating content. Her meals went cold as she adjusted angles for the perfect shot. Even her laughter felt staged, like a sound effect added in post-production.

Inside, Lina felt lonelier than she had ever been.

But she didn’t dare stop. She couldn't. If she stopped, she was terrified she would disappear completely — not just from their feeds, but from memory itself.

One evening, after a particularly brutal day online — one where a misinterpreted post led to a wave of vicious comments — Lina sat on her bed, staring at the screen. Her face, staring back at her from a selfie she no longer recognized. It was smiling, radiant, flawless.

It was not her.

The real Lina was small, tired, fraying at the edges.

She wanted to scream, to break the phone into a thousand shards, to run outside barefoot into the wildness of the night and remember what it felt like to be a human being instead of a product.

Instead, she posted another photo.

Caption: "Feeling so blessed today! 💖🌟 Never been happier!"

#Grateful #LivingMyBestLife

It took only three minutes to reach a hundred likes.

Seven minutes for the first comment: "You’re glowing, queen!"

Ten minutes for a message from a stranger: "I wish I had your life."

Lina put the phone down, face-first.

She leaned back, closed her eyes, and let the weight of the lie sink into her chest. It was a familiar heaviness, one she carried like a second skin.

She wondered if anyone would notice if she vanished.

Not her real self — the one who hadn't laughed without posing for months — but the online self. The bright, polished version. Would they grieve her? Would they even care? Or would they just scroll to the next pretty picture, the next perfect life?

The thought was colder than the autumn wind rattling her windows.

Weeks passed.

Lina posted less. Smiled less. Laughed less.

Her feed became quieter, less curated. A blurry photo of the sky. A messy room. No filters.

The likes dwindled.

The comments slowed.

The DMs dried up.

Without the constant flood of validation, silence settled in, thick and suffocating. But under that silence, something else stirred — something raw, painful, and true.

She was still here.

Not the Lina they applauded, but the girl who once found beauty in rainy days and crumpled poetry. The girl who loved badly sung songs and out-of-focus sunsets.

She decided one night — quietly, without an announcement — to delete her account.

No farewell post, no dramatic goodbye. Just a silent stepping away from the spotlight she had mistaken for sunlight.

Her last notification buzzed around 2 a.m.

"Are you okay? Haven't seen you online."

It was from an old friend she hadn’t spoken to in person in two years.

With trembling fingers, Lina typed a reply: "Not really. Want to meet for coffee?"

The friend responded immediately: "Yes. Tomorrow?"

For the first time in months, Lina smiled — a small, genuine smile that didn’t need to be captured or shared.

Maybe she was invisible to thousands now.

Maybe her worth couldn’t be measured in hearts or followers anymore.

But maybe, just maybe, that was the first real step back to being seen.