“My mom is 6,000 miles away. My best friend is 3 timezones away. My sister is on another continent. I have people who love me—I just can't reach any of them when I actually need a hug.”
The cruelest version of loneliness is having people who love you and not being able to reach them. Your support system exists, but it exists at a distance that turns everything into a scheduled call and a text that says 'miss you.' ILTY can't close the distance, but it's here right now, in your timezone, in the gap between the last goodnight text and the next morning call.
People say 'at least you have people who love you' as if that negates the daily reality of not being able to see them. Yes, you're lucky to have them. Yes, the distance still hurts every single day. Having a support system you can't physically access is its own kind of loneliness—one that comes with the constant frustration of almost-connection. The calls that are never long enough. The texts that can't capture what you actually need to say. The milestones you attend through a phone screen.
And the guilt goes in all directions. You feel guilty for not being there when your mom is sick. Your friend feels guilty for having fun without you. Everyone's trying to maintain something across an impossible distance, and the effort itself is exhausting. Some days you stop responding to messages because the reminder of what you're missing is worse than the silence.
The hardest part might be this: you're grieving people who are still alive. They're right there—on the other end of a call, on your screen—but you can't sit next to them. You can't eat dinner together. You can't show up at their door when things fall apart. The presence of their absence is constant.
•Modern life scatters people—education, careers, relationships, and opportunities pull loved ones to different cities and countries with no mechanism to bring them back together
•Each person in your life moved for good reasons, and so did you—but the cumulative effect is that nobody you love is within reach anymore
•Digital communication creates the illusion of closeness while highlighting the distance—a video call reminds you both how far apart you are
•Time zones make spontaneous connection impossible—by the time you need to talk, they're asleep, and by the time they're free, you've already cried alone and moved on
When it's 2am and your best friend is 8 hours ahead and your mom is 5 hours behind and no one is awake in your window—ILTY is. No scheduling required.
Missing people who are alive is confusing. It doesn't fit neatly into any category of loss. ILTY can help you sit with that specific, hard-to-name feeling.
Sometimes you don't want to call your mom and cry because you know it'll make her feel guilty for being far away. ILTY absorbs the heaviness without the relational cost.
Should you move closer to family? Should you ask your friend to visit? Should you give up an opportunity to be near people you love? These trade-offs are agonizing and ILTY can help you think clearly.
We want to be honest about our limitations:
Consistency matters more than frequency. A regular weekly call is better than sporadic marathon conversations. Share the mundane—photos of your lunch, voice notes about your day—because intimacy lives in the ordinary moments. And see each other in person when you can, even if it means sacrificing other things. Distance relationships that survive are the ones where both people actively choose to maintain them.
That depends on what you'd be giving up and what you'd gain. ILTY can help you think through the trade-offs, but this is a decision that involves career, finances, relationships, and personal goals—a therapist or counselor can help you weigh it more systematically. What ILTY won't do is tell you the answer, because there isn't a universal right one.
That guilt is one of the heaviest costs of geographic distance, and it's not something that goes away with logic. You can know rationally that you can't be everywhere, and still feel terrible about missing your nephew's birthday or your friend's wedding. Acknowledge the guilt without letting it define you. Show up how you can—send something, call, be present digitally. It's not the same, and that's okay to grieve.
ILTY is free during beta. It's not therapy. It's not a cure. It's a place to talk through what you're going through—honestly, without judgment, whenever you need it.