Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Bridges at Midnight
Of the many blogs I read, there seems to be a trend lately to post much less, if at all. Almost no one's been visiting this blog lately, either. I guess it just figures. When people need people to listen the most, they just happen not to be there.
Jumping off a bridge appears to be the suicide method of choice around here. "Ithaca is gorges" read way too many t-shirts around here. Since my campus is in Ithaca, we have a few gorges of our own. They're deep, narrow river valleys that cut through the campus. To get around them, the geniuses around here built a couple bridges. It makes for an awesome walk and a cool view. Looking down from a bridge, the river is quite a distance below. In some cases there are little waterfalls. In one case there's a really big waterfall right beside a bridge. After a rainfall you can get wet just walking past it.
Every year, or every couple years, several students jump off one of the many bridges on campus and take their lives along with them. It's dramatic. It's shocking. It's so public and everyone can see if the police don't get to the scene fast enough. It's incredibly, terribly, depressingly tragic.
I don't think I've ever considered jumping off one of the bridges or committing suicide at all, but tonight I was feeling a bit more down than usual. At 11:30 p.m. I packed my bag with some homework, grabbed my hat, filled up my water bottle, snuck my Ipod into my pocket, and left the room. I walked to the bridge on the south edge of campus and I stood leaning against the railing of each side for several minutes, listening to the sound of the water and watching a small trickle of people passing me by. I was thinking about all the generations of students who had taken their lives by jumping off this bridge, and how bridge jumping is such a big deal on campus here. I watched some people look at me funny, and I wondered if they were wondering if they'd wake up the next day to a headline in the daily college newspaper, "Student Jumps of Bridge, Takes His Life."
I trekked the length of campus from south to north where I arrived at two bridges near the more impressive waterfall on campus. It was dark, chilly, windy, but not too sinister. I was listening to Avril Lavigne sing, "It's a damn cold night, trying to figure out this life..." When I got to the bridge closer to the waterfall, I leaned against the cold, metallic railing. It looked higher to me than last year. I felt caged and I wondered what the reason behind the new, high fence was. Let's cage people to prevent them from jumping, trap them even more. There's no way out.
I walked through a small stretch of woods, and it was already past midnight. The smell of the trees and raw soil was particularly strong tonight. As I walked through the woods, I thought about the freshman girl who was raped right around here last year, around this same time of the year, around this same time of day. I got back to the campus and made my way down the sidewalk I used to walk down every morning last year on my way to class. It took on a whole new feeling in the dark and without the throngs of sleepy students making their way to class. Every once in a while I walked past another person heading back up to the North Residential campus. No one looked my way. I wondered what they were doing around here. Just returning from the library? Hooking up with a teacher or a TA late at night? Who parties on Monday nights?
I walked up to the roof of the library cafe where there are several large concrete benches. I lied down on one of them, and it felt so soothing to just look at the sky and listen to my music. I got a bit nervous about it being dark and nobody around, so after two songs I got up and came to the library, and here I am. I've been writing a bunch of my posts from the library lately. I really can't stand my room, or my dorm. I miss my friends, but then again, I don't know who to miss, I never really had many at all.
Jumping off a bridge appears to be the suicide method of choice around here. "Ithaca is gorges" read way too many t-shirts around here. Since my campus is in Ithaca, we have a few gorges of our own. They're deep, narrow river valleys that cut through the campus. To get around them, the geniuses around here built a couple bridges. It makes for an awesome walk and a cool view. Looking down from a bridge, the river is quite a distance below. In some cases there are little waterfalls. In one case there's a really big waterfall right beside a bridge. After a rainfall you can get wet just walking past it.
Every year, or every couple years, several students jump off one of the many bridges on campus and take their lives along with them. It's dramatic. It's shocking. It's so public and everyone can see if the police don't get to the scene fast enough. It's incredibly, terribly, depressingly tragic.
I don't think I've ever considered jumping off one of the bridges or committing suicide at all, but tonight I was feeling a bit more down than usual. At 11:30 p.m. I packed my bag with some homework, grabbed my hat, filled up my water bottle, snuck my Ipod into my pocket, and left the room. I walked to the bridge on the south edge of campus and I stood leaning against the railing of each side for several minutes, listening to the sound of the water and watching a small trickle of people passing me by. I was thinking about all the generations of students who had taken their lives by jumping off this bridge, and how bridge jumping is such a big deal on campus here. I watched some people look at me funny, and I wondered if they were wondering if they'd wake up the next day to a headline in the daily college newspaper, "Student Jumps of Bridge, Takes His Life."
I trekked the length of campus from south to north where I arrived at two bridges near the more impressive waterfall on campus. It was dark, chilly, windy, but not too sinister. I was listening to Avril Lavigne sing, "It's a damn cold night, trying to figure out this life..." When I got to the bridge closer to the waterfall, I leaned against the cold, metallic railing. It looked higher to me than last year. I felt caged and I wondered what the reason behind the new, high fence was. Let's cage people to prevent them from jumping, trap them even more. There's no way out.
I walked through a small stretch of woods, and it was already past midnight. The smell of the trees and raw soil was particularly strong tonight. As I walked through the woods, I thought about the freshman girl who was raped right around here last year, around this same time of the year, around this same time of day. I got back to the campus and made my way down the sidewalk I used to walk down every morning last year on my way to class. It took on a whole new feeling in the dark and without the throngs of sleepy students making their way to class. Every once in a while I walked past another person heading back up to the North Residential campus. No one looked my way. I wondered what they were doing around here. Just returning from the library? Hooking up with a teacher or a TA late at night? Who parties on Monday nights?
I walked up to the roof of the library cafe where there are several large concrete benches. I lied down on one of them, and it felt so soothing to just look at the sky and listen to my music. I got a bit nervous about it being dark and nobody around, so after two songs I got up and came to the library, and here I am. I've been writing a bunch of my posts from the library lately. I really can't stand my room, or my dorm. I miss my friends, but then again, I don't know who to miss, I never really had many at all.
