Vanished Without a Trace.

Have you ever known someone who just disappeared?

Not metaphorically—actually gone. One day, they’re there. Laughing, working, texting you back. The next, nothing. No messages. No sightings. No answers. Just space where they used to be.

If you have, then you already know: it’s not something you forget. Not ever.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the phenomenon of missing people—not just in crime documentaries or headlines, but in real life, around the world. There’s something deeply unsettling about it, isn’t there? This idea that a person can simply stop existing in the visible world, as if they were never here at all.

And if you haven’t known someone who vanished, you might wonder: How does this even happen?

Well, that depends on where in the world you are.

Let’s start with Japan.

In Japan, there’s a term—johatsu, which means “evaporated.” It refers to people who choose to disappear. Not because they’ve committed crimes or are being hunted down, but because they feel ashamed, overwhelmed, trapped. They might be in debt, divorced, disgraced, or just done. So they vanish—pack up, move on, and never look back. There's even an industry that helps them do it, no questions asked.

It’s voluntary, technically. But when someone feels their only choice is to become a ghost, is it really a choice?

And then there are other kinds of disappearances.

In the U.S., for example, hundreds of thousands are reported missing each year. Most are found. Some aren't. Some leave on purpose. Some don’t get the chance. Children, adults, the elderly. Some are fleeing domestic violence. Some are struggling with mental health. Others are taken—by strangers, by loved ones, by systems that fail them.

In conflict zones—think Syria, Ukraine, Sudan—people disappear into war. Into prisons. Into the ground. Their families are left with nothing but rumors and silence. In countries like Mexico and Colombia, thousands vanish every year, often linked to organized crime. Their bodies may never be found. Their names may never be spoken again by anyone but the people who still search for them.

It’s heavy, I know. But stay with me.

Because this isn’t just about missing persons statistics or global crises. It’s about what’s left behind. The people who wait. The ones who search. The quiet, agonizing limbo of not knowing.

There’s a specific kind of grief that comes with disappearance. It doesn’t follow a timeline. It doesn’t let you bury anything. There’s always that one what-if. That hope, cruel as it is, that maybe—just maybe—today will be the day they come back.

Can you imagine living like that for five years? Ten? A lifetime?

And here’s something else I think about: the people who disappear voluntarily. The ones who choose it. Who ghost the world so completely they might as well have never been here.

It makes me wonder—what’s the line between disappearing and dying? Between vanishing and giving up? Between starting over and giving in?

Is leaving without goodbye a kind of death in itself? Or is it survival? Escape?

These are not easy questions. There are no easy answers.

But what I do know is that whether a person disappears by force or by choice, the impact on those left behind is real. It's raw. And it’s often invisible. We don’t talk enough about the parents who keep their child’s bedroom intact for twenty years. Or the siblings who check every unfamiliar face in a crowd. Or the partners who never stop listening for the door.

So where does that leave us—me and you?

I think it leaves us with responsibility. To care. To notice. To ask better questions about why people disappear, and how we can make it easier for them to be found—or never feel like vanishing was their only option in the first place.

And maybe it also leaves us with a kind of duty to remember. To keep telling these stories. To hold space for the ones who aren’t here, and the ones still waiting.

Because no one should be forgotten.

Not even the vanished.