Have you ever dreamed of disappearing?
Leave.
Start over in a place where nobody knows you.

If only it were that easy.

It is, surely, a fantasy. An idea that appears silently, without drama, almost like a sigh. It doesn't belong to everyone, but Many recognize themselves in her when they dare to look her in the face. It's not a desire to die. It's the desire to to stop being who we have been to others.

The notebook we carry with us

Perhaps the desire to disappear is very similar to this:
to the desire of close the notebook we've been carrying for years.

A used, worn, lived-in notebook.
With handwriting that changed rhythm a thousand times: first neat, then hurried, later almost illegible.
Full of errors and corrections.
With cross-outs and sloppiness.
Of torn leaves and leaves that blew away and were lost along the way.

A notebook that tells our story, yes,
but also weight.

Who hasn't ever felt the temptation to leave it behind and start writing on a new one, completely blank?

When life gets tough

There are lives that don't explode.
They don't collapse.
They don't break visibly.

Simply they squeeze.

They exert pressure through ties that weigh more than they support.
For jobs that became a meaningless obligation.
For roles that no longer represent who one is, but that are still there, demanding consistency.

Pressure doesn't always come from pain.
Sometimes it comes from a life that “works”,
but it stopped being easy to breathe naturally.

Reply to messages.
Keep to schedules.
Be available.
Be responsible.
Be consistent.

To hold onto a version of oneself that no longer feels like one's own.

And when there is no clear reason to leave—when there is no catastrophe to justify abandoning—fantasy appears: disappear.

Evaporate

In Japan there is a word to describe those who choose to do so: jōhatsu.
Means evaporate.

People who, from one day to the next, leave their previous life behind.
No goodbyes.
Without warning.
Without leaving any clear traces.

There are even yonige-yaCompanies that help you leave at night, quietly, with the bare essentials.
They don't invent false identities.
They do not delete official documents.
They help to get off the beaten track.

But beyond the Japanese phenomenon, the important thing is not the method.
It's the impulse.

Because the desire to evaporate does not belong to a culture.
It belongs to human fatigue.

Not wanting to die, just disappearing

Those who dream of disappearing usually don't want a better life.
She wants a life lighter.

One where nobody expects anything.
Where no one complains.
Where there is no need to maintain a previous history.

In this fantasy, disappearing is not a tragedy.
It's a break.

To rest from being:
– the one who always keeps his word,
– the one who always can,
– the one that never fails,
– the one that doesn't allow stopping.

Take a break from explaining decisions.
To justify tiredness.
From maintaining ties out of inertia.

Starting from scratch is not starting empty.

Fantasy is not about erasing everything.
Is Start from scratch knowing what we no longer want to repeat..

Opening a new notebook doesn't mean forgetting what you've learned.
It means writing differently.

Now that we know which mistakes we wouldn't make again,
what opportunities we wouldn't let pass us by,
what relationships do we not want to maintain out of obligation,
which versions of ourselves no longer serve us.

Starting from scratch, in this fantasy,
It's not naiveté.
It's an experience without baggage.

Escape as an imaginary solution

When pressure finds no outlet —when it cannot be stopped, changed or released without consequences—, the mind imagines an outside.

Go far away.
Change cities.
Change country.
Change of environment.

Close the old notebook.
Open a new one.
With clean, silent, expectant leaves.

Escape then appears as symbolic solution.
Not because it's realistic,
but because it promises something essential: relief.

Nobody expects anything from a blank page.
No one judges what has not yet been written.

Why is this fantasy so common today?

We live in an era where everything leaves a mark.
Where everything is archived.
Where change involves explaining.
Where stopping raises suspicion.

It's hard to fail in silence.
It's difficult to reinvent yourself without giving reasons.
It's hard to get tired without feeling guilty.

In that context, disappearing becomes a powerful idea.
Not as a real project, but as mental escape valve.

A way of saying it without saying it:
I can't keep writing like this.

Perhaps it's not about disappearing.
Perhaps it's about close the notebook for a moment, lean it to one side and look at it without obligation.

See everything written.
The good, the crooked, the painful, the things we would never write the same way again.

And only then, decide how to proceed.
Not from flight, but from awareness.

Because sometimes we don't need another life.
Need another way of inhabiting the one we have.