I’ve mentioned this girl on the boards before, but I used to have to escort a girl to and from high school because her dad was an insane control freak. She became an emancipated minor (sort of) and her wingnut father had tried to murder her (that’s why I had to play bodyguard). She “disappeared” about 15 years ago and her family has no idea of her whereabouts. If they did, her father would probably try to kill her again.
My family knows what area she lives in (but no details) and we’re in touch with her quasi-regularly via email, mostly around family holidays and such. She visits us sometimes. For our safety, we don’t know the details of where she lives. There was some worry that if her father found out who we are and that we know how to contact her, my mom and sister would be endangered.
My uncle ran away to join the military. Didn’t tell them for a long time.
My mother - my real mother - disappears regularly and then reappears when she needs help (I was adopted within the family, so everyone knows her). Right now she is in one of her disappearing states.
Hell, I cut my parents off and sort of disappeared for a good many years, too.
I’ve heard it as “Mongolian spot” and, no, I don’t know another term. I thought it got its name because it’s most common in East Asians. Or used to be thought of as most common in that ethnic group. I’m aware Native American babies get them too as well as a few other ethnic groups.
My father. He disappeared without a trace from his entire family for years then reappeared, then disappeared, then reappeared. Apparently he still does this with my brother but I want no part of him anymore.
I left my family without any announcement or incident.
They were hyper-religious. On my 18 birthday in 1956 I just hitchhiked away, joined the military and never looked back. It was much, much easier to disappear back then.
My wife has two good friends with the same story. They each have one son and one daughter. In each case the son has simply vanished without a trace well over ten years ago, while the women are very close to their daughters. One has been widowed for ten years or so and there is no way of even knowing if the son knows that his father died. Very strange. In each case, we wonder if the sister is kept informed but sworn to secrecy.
My great-grandfather, maybe? There are conflicting stories about what became of him, but apparently he went off to work in Minnesota or somewhere, back around 1920, and the family later heard he had died out there. His wife took their six children and went back to Poland, which was where they had come from originally (my grandfather and one other sibling ended up re-immigrating to America).
Anyway, my great-grandmother was, by all accounts, a very difficult woman to live with, so my mother thinks it may have been a deliberate disappearance.
I am amazed at reading this how these people disappear so easily. If a close relative of mine (let’s say my brother) disappeared like the example in the OP, I would hire a private detective to find out what happened to him. This is not posted to advise the OP that s/he should look for his brother, but I personally could not stand not knowing.
My uncle did this, and after months of calling up morgues and filing missing police reports… nothing. A few years later he turned up in North Carolina. Vietnam really messed him up and he hasn’t been the same sense.
I have a first cousin who lives here in Portland who became a recluse after the Enron collapse forced him to return to work after retirement. It apparently caused some sort of mental break, as nobody seems to know where he lives, including his ex-wife. Enron fuckers.
My father tried to pull a disappearing act after he left my mother with three children and no job. Her attorney would track him down from time to time, but he was fairly slippery. I know he died in Fairbanks, but never met the guy.
Okay I’m really scared by all the people that turn up in NC - cause that’s where i am!
I didn’t ‘disappear’ per se, because I did move halfway across the country to get away from my family for 2 years. I still kept in touch, but on my terms, mostly because I was getting a divorce and that was against our beliefs. I did keep in touch with my stepmum, and my family was able to contact me when my little sister died. They then disowned me 2 days after her funeral (on my birthday) for about a year.
I have relocated back to the east coast, and we’ve all reconciled, but I think I will always be a bit on the outside and I actually don’t mind that. They include me in some things, but I’m not expected to show up for every horse-and-pony show. And they just don’t comment on my ‘chosen lifestyle’ as a non-conservative chick.
A friend from college and his wife both severed all connection with their parents. He keeps in touch with his brother and sister, but hasn’t spoken to his parents in decades. He never really talked to me about it, but I think there was some abuse involved. She never told me why she cut her family loose. The two of them have been happily married for many years, have no children, and seem to live a nice life. When we get together, we just don’t talk about family, and all is fine.
My grandmother’s youngest brother just disappeared one day. He was mentally handicapped, but he did work - some sort of manual labor. My grandmother would pack him a lunch and he’d leave in the morning, and come home at night. One day at lunch, his boss came by the house and wanted to know where he was. No one ever saw him again. This all happened before I was born.
I’ve always called them Mongolian spots, and they appear as a dark patch of skin right above the tailbone of a newborn with some ethnicities. My exhusband is like an eighth Mexican, and our two sons had them at birth, although they are both as white as I am, skinwise. “Passing” means that the mother and her family must have identified as Caucasian-only, and the appearance of the spots implies that they are, indeed, “ethnic”.
I divorced my entire family 11 years ago. I did a similar thing about 25 years ago, when I realized that all my interactions with them were negative. But that didn’t take. 11 years ago, when things came to a head again, I walked away and refused all content for like 7 years. My father is an alcoholic wifebeater and child abuser, and my mother is a borderline personality: her emotional response to seeing her children beaten by their father was basically, “why is this happening to me?” She has a pathological inability to conceive of the needs or emotional existence of any person other than herself. One of my sisters is the same. Another one is in a 20-year relationship with a Svengali girlfriend, who has made her hate her family, especially me, because I was the closest and therefore the greatest threat. They move to a different city every few years, with no forwarding information. My third sister eventually got treatment for her irrational anger and temper, and she and I reestablished contact a few years ago, after I got out of the hospital for depression. I have not contact with anyone else, and have no plans ever to do so.
In that 11 years, all four of my grandparents have died, and I haven’t mourned a single one. My mother’s parents were cold and distant: my grandmother never had a nice word to say to me, and my grandfather never said one word to me that wasn’t a lecture about what was wrong with me. My dad’s parents were worse: my grandfather once gave me a bloody nose as a child, when I protested his overt racism: "You don’t see Cardinals and Bluejays living together. " “Cardinals and Bluejays are two different species, Grampa.” “Don’t talk back to me!” Thwack. My grandmother was a miserable, unloving woman. I still have no qualms about not going to their funerals.
Some families are dangerous. “Toxic” is le mot du jour I think. The day I realized that the only good thing I ever got from my mom was table manners, and from my dad, strong teeth, I packed up and moved to Seattle. No regrets.
As emotionally . . . unfinished as I am, I’d be far, far worse if I hadn’t cut those ties.
As curious as I sometimes am about what happened to my brother, I have no desire to hunt him down. If he wants to talk to any of us, he’s perfectly able to. Until then, I assume he broke off contact for a reason and doesn’t want to be found. It’d be nice if he’d at least let us know he’s still alive, but… I guess for all I know, he’s not.
It’s sort of comforting to know this is reasonably common, but its also sad to hear from people in this thread that ditched their own families. I’m fairly certain that’s what happened here.
My dad’s brother, Joe, joined the 101 Ranch Boys (like a rodeo) sometime in the 30’s. My dad was the youngest, and only knew him briefly. He (Joe) died in a flop-house in Chicago in the 70’s.