It’s the middle of winter, not to mention the weatherman said it was fifteen degrees below freezing, yet the air is stifling. It surrounds me like an icy hot blanket, suffocating me. Do I care if I fall victim to the greedy, murderous clasp of night? No, I don’t. It may kill my body, but inside, I am already dead. My body has become an empty shell, lifeless and rid of all hope.

But tonight is the night I am finally giving up. I have lost all hope in continuing to live this pointless existence, and lost all faith in those around me. Did they not see I was suffering? Yes, they must have seen. But rather than offering me comfort, they shunned me. These people whom I have known since childhood abandoned me, and abandoned all hope of saving me; so, I lost all hope of saving myself.

So I am standing here on the bridge, ironically called the Golden Gate Bridge, ready to free the world of my existence. All I have to do is walk over to the edge and jump. But I am still standing in the middle of the bridge, still as a corpse and haggard as death itself, thoughts rushing through my head.

Will it offer the release its name promises? When I jump, will I really see that Golden Gate, or is this a trap, and instead of entering a promised Utopia, I enter that great Inferno? I know not, but I will never know until I take that plunge. So I take a single, tortuous step forward. Then another, then another, until I reach the ledge. I peek over tentatively, and am met with a gush of icy air. I feel my eyes widen as I stare at that deep, dark river below. It is a great, roaring force, pushing its way onward, far from the bridge and me.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes, feeling a panic attack surfacing. I knew this wouldn’t be easy. As I allowed my nerves to calm, I allowed my ears to grow used to the rhythmic roar of the river. When I open my eyes, instead of feeling calm, I feel anger rush through me. Images of my friends and family’s faces course through my memory, their faces smug and smirking, while others are sad. With an angry scream, I rush forward and jump from the edge, plummeting forward through the air.

All at once, a thousand needles stab and prick me all over my body. In the back of my mind, I know it is the icy water, but the sharp, terrible pains of it cause me to open my mouth to scream. Instead of the air leaving my body, water forces its way into my mouth and cascades down my throat. The pain and shock of it causes my body to go rigid, and my chest to burn in terrible agony.

I could still hear the roar of the water when my lungs burst, and the extreme pain of it causes my body to give a last, feeble twitch. Then, a silence falls upon me, and a warmth spreads over me. The roaring of the water ceases, and a serene quiet fills my senses. I kept my eyes closed, feeling the spreading warmth was the fires of Hell, but a cool breeze blowing across my face proved otherwise. I tentatively opened my eyes. I gasped. There’s no way to put it into words, but I was definitely in Heaven, I’d finally been given my release.