I’ve been fascinated by suicide since I was a child. Well, since I was 10 when my guitar teacher killed herself. It was the first I’d heard of suicide– going to a Catholic school, they liked to pretend it didn’t happen, so having the guitar teacher gas herself to death at the bottom of a local beauty spot was pretty awkward. At that time, I thought connecting a hose pipe to your car exhaust and putting it back through your window was the only way to end your own life.
WORDS: LISA BOWMAN
How wrong I was. There’s a whole world out there. Trouble is, killing yourself is not as easy as it seems…
TRAIN IN VAIN
On the tube I’m always one of those people who lingers at the back of the platform, partly because I’m not a wide-eyed crazy who has to be on the train first but mostly because I think someone might push me in front of a train. It doesn’t look the most fun way to go. So why someone would choose it for (what they think is) their one and only shot at suicide is beyond me. Like this woman.
I’d loved to have seen her face when she first popped her head up. What was going through her mind? I wonder if she thought for a fleeting second that she was, in fact dead and was really disappointed with the whole afterlife.
Oh, and my favourite part has to be when she stops to pick up her shoe that’s come off. As if that’s the most important thing in her life right now. Not the fact she SURVIVED A TRAIN DRIVING OVER HER. More amazing is that she just gets in her car and drives off. Mind you, she was probably majorly embarrassed. I know I would be.
BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER
This is old-school suicide. The classic – jumping off a bridge. Before people started gobbling bottles of Value paracetemol or shooting themselves in the face, hurling yourself off a tall bridge was the fail-safe way to do it. Or so they thought.
This particular troubled soul, a certain Miss Sarah Ann Henley had just had a tiff with her fiancé. Well, ex-fiancé I guess. He’d only gone and broken off the frickin’ engagement! What a dick. Being the passionate young female she was, she decided (probably in the heat of the moment with soggy red eyes and a ‘Goodbye cruel world’ attitude) to throw herself off a bridge.
Fortunately/unfortunately, her skirt was so big and pouffy (that’s fashion) that it acted as a parachute and instead of smashing into smithereens in the river below, she gently drifted over to a mud bank, thus escaping unhurt. Despite being a bit of a fruit loop, she went on to marry a nice man who actually liked her and lived to a ripe old age. And this is the reason I love her. Plus I like to think she also started the trend for bridge suicides ‘cos she was so bad ass.
