Scrolling Through Silence

The glow of the screen lit up Mia’s face in the darkness. It was 2:47 a.m., the hour of ghosts and broken sleep. The room around her was quiet — too quiet. No traffic sounds, no wind against the windowpane. Just the soft hum of her charger and the rhythmic tapping of her thumb as she scrolled through posts, reels, likes, and lives that didn’t feel like her own.

She wasn’t really looking at anything. Her eyes glazed over curated smiles, sunrise lattes, couple goals, and productivity hacks. Everyone seemed to be moving forward while she floated in place — scrolling, endlessly scrolling, like maybe the next swipe would deliver something real.

A message notification blinked from the top of her screen. It was from Dylan.

> "Hey… You up?"

Mia hesitated. She hadn’t talked to him in weeks, not since their late-night argument about something so small she couldn’t even remember the details now. Just that he stopped replying. And she didn’t follow up. Stubborn pride or self-protection? Hard to tell the difference anymore.

She didn’t reply.

Instead, she clicked on his profile. New post: him at a party. Smiling. Surrounded by laughter and light. Was he missing her at all, or just reaching out out of boredom?

The silence in her apartment pressed heavier on her chest. She dropped the phone to the bed and stared at the ceiling. In the faint light from her phone, the corners of her room looked farther away than they were — like the walls had shifted just enough to make her feel small.

It wasn’t always like this. A year ago, she could fill her weekends with brunches, gallery walks, and spontaneous road trips. But then came the layoffs, the breakup, the rising rent, and the creeping distance between her and her so-called circle. Everyone was “just busy.” Everyone “meant to call.” And Mia, too exhausted to chase connections, slowly learned how to be alone — or at least, how to pretend it didn’t hurt.

But pretending gets loud at night.

She picked up the phone again. Opened a blank note. Typed: “I feel like I’m disappearing, one scroll at a time.”

She stared at the words. Then deleted them.

Instead, she opened Instagram and watched strangers dancing, baking, and giving life advice in 60-second doses. Everyone had something to say, and yet no one really said anything. Not the kind of anything that mattered at 2:47 a.m. when you felt like a ghost in your own life.

A sudden urge took over. Mia turned on the front-facing camera and hit “Record.”

No filter. No script.

“I don’t really know why I’m doing this,” she said, her voice quieter than expected. “But if you’re watching this at 3 a.m. too… and you’re tired of pretending you’re okay when you’re really not… you’re not the only one. I don’t have answers. Just… I see you.”

She stared into the camera for a few seconds. Then hit “Post.”

It felt terrifying. But also freeing. For once, she wasn’t packaging her life with pretty lighting and fake peace.

She expected silence. Or worse, ridicule.

But within minutes, her phone vibrated. Then again. And again.

> “Same.”

“I needed this tonight. Thank you.”

“Didn’t know someone else felt this way.”

More comments followed. Strangers, yes, but their words felt closer than some of the people she used to call friends.

Tears slipped down her cheeks — not the dramatic kind, but the quiet ones that happen when a dam you didn’t know existed finally cracks.

She replied to some of them. Hearted others. For the first time in months, Mia wasn’t just scrolling through silence — she was heard.

The next morning, sunlight crept through her curtains. Her room looked the same, but something in her chest had shifted — a subtle warmth where cold used to sit. The day ahead was still uncertain, her problems still real. But now she knew: connection could exist in unlikely places, even through a screen, even in the dark.

And she wasn’t invisible after all.