[who's responsible?]

This is annoying me now -
In my experience missing people don't go around saying "I'm missing don't tell anyone". The source for my experience? Me. I went missing. To cut a long story short I had a lot of issues, masses of self-loathing and hate and convinced myself that everyone would be better off without me. So I fucked off. After doing so I managed to sort myself out and start a new life and was completely convinced that everyone was happier without me around. I was officially missing for four years. I never told a soul. I had made new friends, relationships, work, home, everything. I had started again. I never told anyone. So much so that when my case was shown on the TV Missing programme several people I worked with rang up and told them where I was. I didn't even know I'd been reported missing, I just assumed no one would bother looking for me. I assumed they didn't want me around. The first I knew was when my phone rang.
If you're in such a desperate state as to vanish off the face of the earth, you DON'T TELL ANYONE.
You push all your past behind you and hope it never comes back, because "they are all better off with you not around". It took that "being found out" moment to make me realise that I was wrong. They did actually give a shit. It took all of 30 seconds from that moment to make me pick up the phone.
I'm lucky that I got the chance to put things right, though the guilt of how much hurt I caused through my utter fucking selfishness is still hard to deal with even now. I made a mistake, a four year long mistake, but the fact remains that I never told anyone, let alone a random stranger at a meeting.