LJ Roberts - Have You Seen This Person?: Ten Unsolved Disappearances, 2000-2013

During stressful times its not uncommon to fantasize about disappearing and starting over.

Most of us, at some point in our lives, have daydreamed about walking away from it all, leaving behind our problems and starting all over again with a clean slate. Perhaps we dream of relocating to a new city or country where we can leave behind everything and everyone we know.

Perhaps we even research our escape plans, start saving or looking for jobs that will whisk us away to far-off landsbut how many of us actually follow through?

For most of us these fantasies are never realized, but what about those who do walk away from their lives, and loved ones, never to return?

What about those of us who are ripped from their lives against their will, never to be heard from again?

What becomes of those of us who simply vanish and how does the world left behind change in their absence?

What happens when someone is reported missing and then what happens when the trail goes cold?

According to statistics provided by www.missing.org, someone is reported missing every 90 seconds in the United Kingdom (UK) and a total of 186,000 people are reported missing each year. One hundred thousand of those missing are adults, the remaining 86,000 are children. Seventy-seven percent of missing adults are found within 24 hours of being reported, with the remainder being found within a week. Of the 86,000 children who go missing, 90 percent are found within a week of being reported.

The 2018 NCIC Missing Person and Unidentified Person Statistics report, published to the FBI website, states there were 85,459 active missing person records entered into the database in 2018; 34 percent of these entries represented American children and juveniles and 45.1 percent represented Americans under 21. A total of 612,846 missing files were entered into the system in 2018.

As a teenager I grew bored of small-town life relatively quickly and by the time I was 17 I was living on the other side of England with an entirely new set of friends, a new job and a whole new life. I traveled around Europe and Asia and eventually found myself living in Bangkok, Thailand. I made fewer visits home, drifted from my local friends and found myself responding less and less to messages and emails from my oftentimes concerned parents.

My responses became so short and impersonal that at one point they were unsure if it was even me responding.

I was at a strange place in my life and the disconnect I felt between who I used to be and who I had become left me unanchored in a state that had me constantly questioning my purpose. I shed all responsibility to friends and family and left them worrying and wondering about my whereabouts and if I was even alive or okay. At the time it didnt feel as though I was doing anything wrong. I didnt have the awareness to know how much pain and stress I was causing those around me with my intermittent style of communication.

At one point I even considered completely cutting off and walking away from everyone I knew, discarding every obligation I had to society and opting out of all the responsibilities that came with it. It was a thought that gave me relief and I had no fear of what would happen to me or how it would turn out. It was an adventure.

Several years later I did return home, and it felt like home for the first time, but it made me wonder, what if I hadnt come back?

Although my experiences were, for the most part, amazing, I had at times found myself in many compromising places over the years. I wound up in cities booby-trapped with bad situations, oftentimes surrounded by ill-intentioned strangers and easy opportunities to make devastating life-altering decisions, but thankfully, no matter how lost I felt, I never fell victim to any of them. I did, however, meet a plethora of people during my travels who did find themselves chewed up and spat out by the cities they ended up in. I saw everything from homelessness, to addiction, to unchecked mental illness in those wandering souls who felt they could never go home.

I met all kinds of walk-aways.

I met a French man in his early 30s who told me that he had traveled to the other side of the world to shed his old skin and cut off from everyone he knew. He was thin with sad deep-set eyes and long matted hair, dressed in the usual hippie garb you see on backpackers in Southeast Asia. He told me that he used to be a businessman with a wife, a house and a sports car but couldnt take his life anymore. I asked him if there was an event that triggered his decision, and although he was hesitant to talk at first, he hinted at the death of his child. My heart sank as I listened to him talk about his hopes to find meaning again.

I met people of all ages, from children and teenagers who had gone off the grid to escape abusive situations to pensioners relocating to relieve chronic loneliness. Some were happy with their decisions, others crippled by them, some had occasional contact with their families, others didnt.

I met scores of men who had fled their lives after messy divorces back home to find love in Southeast Asian countries and settle down in rural villages with local women to live a simple life. I met girls who had fled abusive relationships in their home countries to seek escape, freedom and adventure. I met twenty-something backpackers who just didnt want the party to end and had been out of their countries for more than a decade. I met penniless ex-pats turned addicts who could no longer hold down jobs and were almost destitute but refused to return to their old lives. I met lonely travelers looking for something they just couldnt find.