The Ones Who Jumped


The afternoon was surprisingly chilly for the warm fall day. A woman walked on the edge of
the road next to a heavily wooded forest. That woman was my mother; hair tightly knotted in
a bun, makeup smeared and hands shaky. She walked in such a manner that would make you
think someone was following her; she constantly looked around her shoulder breathing heavy
gusts of air that rose up into the sky like tiny clouds floating in the night but then they were blown
away by the wind. Her heart was beating faster and faster until she came upon a bridge. It slowed, and
she let out a sigh of relief. This particular bridge was called Gulver Bridge; it overlooked our whole town,
off into the mountains with a twisting river flowing beneath it. Of course to our town it was known as Suicide Bridge, with seven deaths reported in the past five years mothers feared their children would
run off the wrong end. But of course my mother didn’t fear that, my mother wasn’t afraid of
anything or at least that’s what I thought. Standing on the edge of the bridge with her hair being
torn out of its bun by the wicked wind she smiled and in one quick motion that would have been
easy to miss if you had blinked, she jumped of the bridge. I used to spend hours pondering why
on earth my mother would do it, but as I grew I learned that my smiling mother was pained by
happiness itself and the smile she plastered on her face; the funny thing was we all believed it,
which, in the end, was what killed her.
A man biked to the edge of town. He stopped when he saw the now leaving sign. He sighed and
looked back at the small town. This particular man was still, five years later, grieving the loss of
his wife. The man wanted desperately to leave the town, to bike away, leave all of his memories
behind and start new, but for some unknown reason he didn’t. He felt that if he even took one
step outside of the town he would regret it; this was the town his wife grew up in, and he wanted
his daughter to grow up the same. This man was my father, a widower who worked too hard
and even when he stopped working, he still seemed to be. When I was thirteen, I stopped talking
to him because he wouldn’t take me to my mother’s grave on my birthday. My father was a
strange man, a dull business man who married a carefree out-of-work woman. I can sometimes
remember him before mom died, he was happy, he didn’t work 24/7 like he does now and he
always joked; but now he just takes long bike rides to the edge of town and ignores me as if he
has forgotten he has a daughter. A part of me wants to cry out for help from him but another part
of me, a much stronger part, wants me to make him regret losing me, not loving me like he
did before, oh yes, a part of me wants to do something so harsh that he will never get a second
chance because in my mind no one deserves second chances.
A girl sat at a desk drumming her fingers impatiently. In front of her sat a piece a torn notebook
paper and a pen. The girl had extremely long black hair that flowed down her back like a
waterfall but this waterfall that had many tangles and matted stops that the girl had long since
stopped caring about. Looking around her room, you could see that she was a very happy person,
she had many photos of her, her family and friends pinned to a bulletin boarded along with a
perfect report card and an award for fastest runner in the school. But this girl sat there with a pen
and paper preparing to write a suicide note. She was not at all unhappy with her life but she knew
her best friend who she loved since she had first met her was and this girl knew it, she knew it
was only a matter of time before her friend killed herself and she couldn’t bear the idea of living
without her. So she wouldn’t. So she bent over the desk and scrawled in her perfect handwriting
her last words.

Kinsley,
I am so sorry. But I know it was only a matter of time before you killed yourself. And I could never live without you because I love you too much and lately I’ve wanted
nothing more than to tell you that, and tell you that you have so much to live for but you
wouldn’t listen would you?
I’ll miss you but I’ll see you there.
Sonnet


That letter was written for me. That letter was written by the happiest person I know, my best
friend who was always smiling, the girl who changed her name at twelve to Sonnet because she
memorized Shakespeare, the girl whose biggest problem was losing her phone or getting a B on
a test. I never truly understood happy people, I had always been a sad person, I never smiled
or laughed and when I did it was fake happiness. But with happy people, purely happy people
they never had to fake it. My whole life it seemed I spent trying to understand them and how
they functioned and it only caused me pain because I knew I would never be like them. Sonnet
had always been happy, for as long as I knew her but lately she watched me as if studying me, as if she
wanted to know more than she did. Sonnet had always been one of those people who dug too deep, who
wouldn’t stop at the truth; she would want your motive behind it, she would want to know every detail. I
think she was finally starting to notice how sad I was, she finally started to notice how much pain I was in.
I could see her slowly shrinking as if she was becoming depressed too. A memory flashed in front of
me.
A couple of weeks ago we sat on a park bench counting the night stars.
“Kinsley?” her head swiveled toward me, black hair swishing in the wind.

\I turned, looking into her dark eyes; they did not match her happy personality.

She studied me, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“How come I don’t believe you then?”

I chuckled looking away, “You’ve believed me all the other times and it was never true then.”

I felt her eyes still on me, “Oh.” her voice cracked but I pretended not to notice.

Now the happiest person I knew reached into a bag and pulled out a bottle of pain killers. She slowly
twisted off the cap as if she was unsure what would be inside and then she swallowed each tiny pill
feeling it slide down into her stomach. Once all the pills were gone she stumbled to her bed, her note
clutched tightly in her hand, then lay down; waiting for someone to find her lifeless body.
This night, unlike the night my mother killed herself, was extremely warm. But it wasn’t the
good kind of warm it was the kind that made the air sticky and made you inhale twice because
the warm air that inflated your lungs just wasn’t enough. The hairs stuck to the back of my neck
as I walked down the road. The new street lamp shined too bright casting my shadow across the
damp pavement. I stopped, suddenly acknowledging that this would be the last time I would
see my shadow. I smiled. Walking faster now I was soon standing on the edge of the bridge,
my back pressed against the rail and nothing between me and the river but the whirling wind
which begged me to fall into its arms, to fly with it. I had no closure but that was okay, dying
was enough closure for me, soon I would be with my mother, with Sonnet, and my father would
never get his second chance. It seemed weird, this was the end. It didn’t feel like it, it felt to clear
and calm. I thought death was all about confusion. Of course I’ve thought a lot of things; it will
be nice to not have to think anymore, peaceful. I in took one more sticky breath of air and then
let go. I imagined the wind smiling as I fell into its arms.