I've been a search and rescue diver for 12 years. We're called to help find missing people, and I love it when someone is found safe. So why do I feel this way about the missing people we never find?

I've been a search and rescue diver for 12 years now, and in all that time I've helped find dozens of missing people. It's a rewarding job, because we usually find them safe and sound. We're only called in on lakes and rivers, so it's almost always just been about locating someone who forgot to tell someone their planned route. <br><br>Once in a while, though, we don't find them. Sometimes we find a body. Sometimes we never find anything at all. <br><br>It's always the ones we never find that bother me. I start thinking about them. Wondering what happened to them, wondering if they're still alive, wondering if there's anything we could have done to help them. Sometimes I even dream about them at night. <br><br>But I don't just dream that I find them beheaded in a ditch, or that they were kidnapped by a sinister abductor and I didn't get there in time. And I don't dream that we're too late, that they've been dead for days and there's nothing I can do.<br><br>I dream that they're alive. I dream that they're happy. I dream that they've found a beautiful place to live in the woods, and they're eating berries and drinking from streams like they're Adam or something. I dream that they're with friends, and that they're having a great time together. I dream that they're finally free.<br><br>I've been having these dreams for years, but it wasn't until recently that I realized their common thread: In my heart, I truly believe that all these missing people are better off wherever they are. <br><br>I can't explain it. Even to myself. I just have this gut feeling, the same sort of gut feeling that a mom gets when she knows something's wrong with her kid before she even knows *what* it is. <br><br>I've talked to other divers about it. They don't feel the same way. They get upset when we don't find someone, but not in the same way as me. They're sad that we lost someone. I'm... relieved, I guess, that whoever it is got away. <br><br>I mean, where are they all going? And how are they getting there? These people don't just... disappear. But I'm glad they do. <br><br>I guess I just streamlined this whole post just to say that I'm happy when people get to go live in the woods or something, and I don't think they're in any danger.<br><br>Oh well. Maybe it's just a diver thing.