Obsession

I know I'll kill myself someday. It's the only certain thing about my future, and it's still pretty vague. I don't know when I'll do it, or how I'll do it, or where I'll be. I don't know if it's going to happen three months from now, or thirty years.

I've become a weird curator of suicide trivia. I know how many aspirin I'd have to take, and I know all the things that can go wrong tying a noose. In the room I'm in right now, I can count five ways to off myself without leaving it. My death will be a decision, and an informed one at that, not merely some random flight of fancy.

Over the last seven years I've read so many accounts of those who very nearly succeeded in suicide, but where brought back from unconsciousness. Always, they express gratitude for survival. I wonder if they lie to the press, because suicide attempts are rarely one-off events. I know when the time comes for me, I'll feel relief in my final moments.

I walk over a bridge across a major river almost every day. An average of 12 people jump off the bridge each year. Sometimes I stop halfway across and face out into the river frothing a hundred feet below. I think that for someone not too long ago, perhaps even someone I have walked past on this bridge, this view was their last.

I never jump.