When you have no one to talk to

A few years ago I was crying into a pillow at 2am so my family wouldn’t hear. I had people in my life. That was the strange part. I had friends I could have texted, and I didn’t, because everyone had their own stuff going on and I didn’t want my pain to become their problem.

If you searched the phrase that brought you here, you probably know that exact math. It’s not that no one exists. It’s that no one feels reachable without a cost.

So here’s what I learned, as one person who’s been in that spot, not as a therapist.

The first thing is that the burden math is usually wrong. The people who care about you almost never experience your 2am text the way you imagine they will. You’re predicting their resentment from inside the worst hour of your day, which is the least reliable place to predict anything from. If there is one person who has ever said “you can always call me,” they mostly meant it. The text can be small. “Rough night. Don’t need anything. Just didn’t want to be the only one who knew.”

The second thing is that saying it somewhere matters, even when no one answers. Writing the feeling down, out loud, outside your own head, changes its weight. It’s the difference between a thought circling and a thought placed. A notes app works. A letter you never send works.

The third thing: if the heaviness has tipped into thoughts of hurting yourself, that’s past what a stranger’s blog post or any app is for. In the US you can call or text 988 any hour, and a real person answers. Using it isn’t dramatic. It’s what it’s for.

And the last thing is the one I ended up building. What I wanted that night wasn’t advice or a conversation. I wanted someone to simply know, without my name attached and without it becoming anyone’s problem. Nothing like that existed, so I’ve spent the last year of nights and weekends making it. It’s called Wayfeel: an anonymous map where you drop how you feel and see that people near you feel things too. No comments, no profiles, no replies. Just quiet proof that you’re not the only pin on the map.

It isn’t out yet. If “somewhere to put the feeling, anonymously” sounds like the thing you needed tonight, the waitlist is at wayfeel.io, and you’ll be first in when it opens. Either way, I hope the night gets lighter. It did for me, eventually, and I know how empty that sounds at 2am, and I’m saying it anyway because it’s true.

— Jack, founder of Wayfeel