2 years ago to this exact day. October 9th 2012 I watched a man kill himself by jumping off the Hawthorne Street bridge into the Willamette River. Its something I have replayed in my head over and over again every single day since. - I was living with my love in Portland and I had ridden the bus with her to work that day, on the way back downtown I figured instead of heading back home I would maybe walk waterfront and get some much needed writing done. Today being my best friends birthday i figured i would call her and catch up as well. I got downtown and started to walk waterfront minding my own damn business looking for somewhere to sit and as im walking towards what looked like a good area i look up and see this brother on the Hawthorne st bridge swing one leg over the guard railing and then his second He briefly hesitates and then jumps and plunges deep into the river. !! Excuse my naivety, i had only been living in town for a couple months and didnt really understand the severity of the situation at first. I was excited that someone had the guts to make a crazy jump like that, not putting two and two together that this wasnt a stunt.... myself being the only one around who saw it or cared at least ran over to the ledge to tell him hes crazy or that was insane or something but what i see wasnt what id expected at all. Its easy to misjudge the power of something like a river until you see a contrasting force going against it. The man finally arose and popped his head up looking around for somewhere to swim, but there was nowhere. He began swimming as hard as he could just to barely stay afloat in the same spot, and this is when i started to panic. He looks up and sees me and screams help!! help!! help!!! i look around desperately for something throw in to help him and there is nothing, by this time people are seeing me panic and trying to help me, i dial 911 but it took over 2 minutes to get through to an actual human being. I finally get through to an operator and im frantic trying to explain to her whats happening and she said they are responding immediately. I look up to see a boat on the other end of the river almost a football field away starting to make its way towards the spot in the river where a crowd has now gathered on the ledge... me being the center of it. the boat gets to where we are on the wall and we are all pointing and screaming trying to guide them to where were the now stiff cardiac arrest stricken body is sinking, they have a giant hook and are trying to make a hail mary snag but to no avail. they searched for 10-15 minutes with this hook, its starting to sink in that the body now belongs the currents and a different boat is going to have to come in. They call in a different boat that has a wet suit of sorts physically attached to the boat itself so they cant lose their own diver to the currents. They dump the diver in with an oxygen tank and he is underwater for about 10 minutes it seems before popping his head up and waiving over the boat. Once the boat arises a bunch of on deck crew in life jackets rush to the ledge to pull the diver out and then i see 2 or 3 men reach in and scoop out the cadaver. the head flopped around on the neck and the limbs hung lifeless as they drug the body to a like mobile aquatic gurney they had on the boat. the boat sped away and you could see them trying to the mandatory resuscitation procedures but everyone who just witnessed what happened knows very well the man is gone. Everyone is sort of in shock and walking away from the ledge with a certain heaviness in the air. a couple of us stayed behind and smoked a couple cigarettes together, just to sort of half way comfort each other from what we all had just saw...the best way strangers can at least. After it was said and done i walked away from the situation nauseated and came across a piece of graffiti right around the corner from the scene that read THE SLAVES WILL SERVE... i walked towards the original intended patch of grass and write the entire experience in my notebook with precise details. I didnt know how or why or what, but i knew very well the unfortunate death id just seen was a sign of something bigger coming & i was right. 3 weeks later i marked my own anniversary and returned home from Portland by myself with a shattered spirit and embarked on solo journey thats brought us to this very moment. Been the hardest 2 years of my life....but i have learned more in these past 2 years than i did in the other 20 combined. It sounds crazy but when i was watching the man drown, the amount of empathy i had for the situation was insane, i really felt like i was watching myself drown. the intensity of the water pulling you under. i swear if i close my eyes hard enough i can still feel the struggle of not being able to surface. that experience will stick with me forever. he looked right at me and yelled help. i cant ever get that out of my brain. ...apparently there are suicide hotline numbers posted on the bridges because its sort of a regular thing in cities, i searched and searched there was never even an obituary. i often wonder his name, wonder if he had a family, wonder what his favorite band was. As just another statistic who lives with a lot of anxiety & depression, October is a really surreal and reflective month for me. blegh. sorry for brain spewing.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 20:23:56 +0000
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