we had one more suicide this year off the golden gate bridge than we did in 2007. since 1937 when the bridge opened, there have been more than 1300 hearty souls to take the plunge. if you saw the riveting documentary "the bridge," you know that there's no soaring transcendent moment when you take that plunge. you drop like a rock & smash yourself into the concrete-like water. no womb re-entry. no human fantasy fulfilled. just ignominious death in all it's grinning glory.
anyone who survives the drop (amazingly, there have been a few)pretty much spends years in physical therapy & probably the rest of their lives in real true physically human pain. in the film, what's interesting is that the real true mental pain that drove them to make the leap is gone. vanished. for one survivor, it vanished (that real true mental pain)when he saw his hands hoisting his body up over the railing. "at that moment," he says, " i thought: all my problems, they're nothing, they could be easily solved." very quickly, his new problem became a very real physical one: surviving the drop & it's aftermath.
most of these folks (in the film, anyway)are under 40yo. they don't have cancer. some have jobs. they're only about half way through their run. they simply failed to see that their cul-de-sac was an intersection. what they also failed to see is that friends have to cope, workers(those lucky ones who get to fish them out of the bay)have to deal, & the world just keeps spinning on.
in 2008, 34 folks made the drop.
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