God feels silent and my prayers seem unanswered

The silence of God is one of the most common experiences of real believers - it fills the Psalms: 'O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not' (Psalm 22:2 - the very psalm Jesus quoted on the cross). So the first truth is: silence is not proof of absence, abandonment, or punishment.

Scripture gives several honest categories: some answers are delayed for reasons we cannot see (Daniel's answer was dispatched immediately but arrived three weeks later, Daniel 10:12-13); some are 'no' or 'not this way' from a wise Father - Paul asked three times for his thorn to be removed and received instead 'My grace is sufficient for thee' (2 Corinthians 12:8-9); some seasons are simply walking by faith, not sight (2 Corinthians 5:7), where God is working invisibly (John 5:17). Jesus told a parable specifically 'that men ought always to pray, and not to faint' (Luke 18:1) - persistence in the silence is not denial; it is what faith looks like.

Keep praying plainly, keep reading (Scripture is God speaking even when feelings are mute), examine honestly whether anything needs confessing (Psalm 66:18) without descending into self-torture, and lean on believers who have survived their own silent seasons. 'Though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come' (Habakkuk 2:3).