I stumbled upon this story from 2003 earlier this week. It’s about people who commit suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge, and it’s incredible. I knew the bridge had a history of that type of thing, but I had no idea the numbers were in the thousands.
The whole thing is illuminating, but a particular passage stood out to me from a survivor of the fall (of whom there aren’t many):
Survivors often regret their decision in midair, if not before. Ken Baldwin and Kevin Hines both say they hurdled over the railing, afraid that if they stood on the chord they might lose their courage. Baldwin was twenty-eight and severely depressed on the August day in 1985 when he told his wife not to expect him home till late. “I wanted to disappear,” he said. “So the Golden Gate was the spot. I’d heard that the water just sweeps you under.” On the bridge, Baldwin counted to ten and stayed frozen. He counted to ten again, then vaulted over. “I still see my hands coming off the railing,” he said. As he crossed the chord in flight, Baldwin recalls, “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”
I think most of us find suicide—even the thought of it—so hard to understand, and I’ve been wondering lately what kind of state of mind a person is in when they enter that place. This story helped me understand it just a little better.
It’s longer read, but definitely worth it. It’s odd that I just came across it now, because a barrier on the bridge—such a focal point of the story—began being constructed just a few months ago.