People who disappear.

I dunno if this is lounge fodder but I couldn't think where else to put it. A couple of weeks ago a 19 year old student who attends (attended?) my alma mater disappeared. He gave no outward signs of being in distress to his friends or family. His friends and others online have been proactive in putting up posters and combing the areas where he was last seen to try to find him, to no avail as yet. He's been missing since the start of February so the possiblity that he's on a bender, sitting getting stoned or is holed up in a lovenest have since faded. He was last sighted near the local docks which suggests to me he ended his own life in the water. However a body hasn't been found and it's possible he may have taken a ferry across to England. However, he didn't take credit or debit cards nor a passport (although you don't actually need one to travel to England, you need them for further afield).

Only at Christmas a young woman also disappeared, strangely enough in roughly the same locale. It was near the water anyway that she was last spotted so she too may have ended or life, or fallen in and may never be found. This is fast getting into tl;dr territory but I'm amazed and saddened that in this day and age someone can literally disappear in the middle of a busy city and not be found. There are several precedents in recent years with a young man disappearing one stormy night in 2000. His folks still hold out the hope he's out there somewhere but it seems likely he was blown into a swollen river and swept out into the Irish Sea. Most ominously of all back in the mid '80s a young boy of 13 disappeared on his way home from school. His school bag was found but no other trace of him remains.

I'm not sure how common situations like this are. I mean Britain and the US, and Canada are all much bigger societies where a person could probably disappear and not be found if they didn't want to be. Take a greyhound or train to another city on the other side of the country and you might never be found. Ireland isn't like that. There are only 6 million people on this island and once you get beyond the biggest cities people in a locality tend to know each other. So I don't think any of the people I've mentioned are quietly working away in some other part of the country, escaping from their previous woes.

The two people I first mentioned may well have accidentally fallen into water and drowned but if they decided to end their lives I can't think of any way worse with regards to their families. It doesn't bear thinking about that a loved one would never be seen again. As horrid as the notion is, a body would at least give closure.

ETA: One thing I find fascinating is that several people have come out of the woodwork to say they deliberately disappeared at stressful times in their lives and that some of them lasted several weeks before giving up and returning to their families. They slept rough, dumpster dived, etc. and were able to survive, one account I read a guy even disguised himself so he wouldn't be readily recognised. He'd seen posters with his picture on them. Anyway I better get to work. If you've lasted to this point in the post I salute thee.

Its a sad fact of life, but it happens. In some cases people just don't want to be themselves anymore, in others, its a tragedy that goes unnoticed until later. It's not that surprising people can vanish, fairly easily, especially, if they start living off the grid. I will be honest and say that I know a few of the people around in my area, but if someone was to live there unknown, I wouldn't know about it.

With regard to them ending their life. If they are at that point, they are not thinking about their familes and the impact it will have on them. They just want out.

Even in North America it can't be simple to disappear anymore, not if you want to live a reasonably comfortable life. There's just so much paperwork involved in living an ordinary middle class existence anymore. You'd either have to be prepared to live a street type life, or become a successful document forger, I'd imagine.