How do I let go of the cases and victims I couldn't help?

The cases you could not close and the victims you could not help ride home with you and stay. You are carrying more than you know how to put down, and it is piling up. That weight is not a sign you care too much or handle it badly. It is the honest cost of doing work that matters with a heart that is still working. Here is the hard truth to make peace with: you cannot save everyone, and the ones you could not reach are not a debt you owe with your own peace of mind. You did what could be done with what you had. Carrying their faces forever does not serve them — it only slowly breaks the person who might help the next one. Letting go is not forgetting or not caring. It is refusing to be crushed by what was never fully in your power. You need somewhere to set this down, because a person cannot hold it all alone forever. Talk to someone who understands the work — a peer, a counselor who deals with this. Find a way to mark the ones you carry and then release them, whatever that looks like for you. Feel it, honor it, and let it move through instead of settling in. The care that makes this hurt is the same care that makes you good at it. Protect it by not letting it bury you.