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The post is absolutely perfectly crafted. A masterpiece of Internet material.

I’m in the 2 year club on Reddit. I have a Twitter with 42 followers. I have a couple hundred Facebook friends. 20 likes for a picture or a status is a resounding success for me.

But this I knew would get me real attention. Everyone sympathizes with grandparents and incurable diseases. I was hoping for a thousand upvotes, easy.

I uploaded a picture of my grandmother’s paintings to reddit. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s 4 years ago. She’s painted pictures her whole life. Beautiful landscapes and strange people. She bases them on photos she takes.

The first drawings right after her diagnosis are normal. The ones the year after are less detailed. The ones after that are even less detailed. The ones from this year are just shapes and colors and smears.

She doesn’t know who I am anymore, hasn’t for the past year. She doesn’t know who my parents are. She doesn’t know who she is. She requires assistance with everything. She was put on hospice last fall but the doctors say she could live for years before she dies. She smiles a lot. Her eyes are sad. She fingerpaints now because she can’t hold a brush, and they’re letting her paint a lot less because they have to watch her constantly or she’ll eat the paint.

She was a gorgeous young woman in her day, a real stunner. She aged gracefully. Only since the diagnosis has her spirit and appearance waned. She went down swinging, as we all do.

I’ve crafted the post — it shows the paintings’ progression from skilled to sloppy. Truly tragic and human.

I uploaded it onto reddit’s /r/pics last night. I really need to have some validation from the external universe. I’m quite depressed, not just from grandma’s condition but from my own life.

I spend most my time alone. I am an average guy, and the world has no use for average guys. I am disposable. I have no girlfriend and don’t see the point in getting married. Children are too expensive. I am getting used to the thought of living my entire life like this — an empty apartment, occasional meals with friends who are also alone, day-in-day-out job that I neither hate nor like, and hobbies and passions pursued in obscurity. I don’t know that I’ll ever own a house. I will probably die alone in my bed. A quiet death in my sleep in the next forty years, with my mind free of the Alzheimer’s that runs in my family, is the best I can hope for. I’m trying to wrap my head around that.

But a nice Reddit post with a few thousand upvotes is one of those little things worth living for. People are quite kind and supportive if they can see that you exist.

I log into my Reddit profile and see I have 30 notifications. I’m excited, though 30 notifications in 24 hours isn’t a whole lot for a post like this. In fact, it’s minuscule. I push away the beginnings of my disappointment and click my inbox.

There are many condolences and comments of support and how beautiful the paintings are and how beautiful humans can be. None of them are particularly noteworthy or creative, though one person comments “the guy in the third photo reminds me of Josh Brolin.” I reach the end of the messages and upvote them all. The post has 32 upvotes.

I check the /r/pics page. My pic is on the fourth page and fading fast.

I know at this point it won’t go viral, but I keep checking it all day. I get a few more comments, a few more upvotes. Nothing more.

I’ve seen people upload things just like this that get a thousand times the upvotes mine has received. Don’t tell me luck and timing isn’t the deciding factor in success.

That evening I sit down at my computer after another day at the office. My curtains are drawn and the sun is going down. Across town at the nursing home, my grandma is being fed strained vegetables and dribbling on her chin. She used to make the best green bean casserole for Thanksgiving. My parents are probably sitting in front of the TV flipping between Fox and CNN and getting into arguments with each other over how crazy Trump is.

And I’m here, in my third floor apartment with the thermostat set to 70 degrees, clicking on the little circular arrow of my safari browser and hoping against hope that I’ll see the numbers of upvotes explode into a glorious upward tick, boosting my spirits and my dopamine levels.

It doesn’t happen. It will never happen. Because I am invisible and so is most everyone.

“Come on, you guys,” I say, refreshing. “Help me out here.”

I sit at my desk, tapping, tapping, tapping. I realize I’m crying.