I am giving you fair warning--Do NOT read this if you are sensitive to the issue of suicide!!
Here's the deal...when I was in Georgia. I was driving to my Grandma's house and I got stopped in a line of traffic three different times. Why, you ask? Because there were tractors driving on the road--and one lawn mower. For me, this is totally understandable. And I am not much of a road rage kind of girl anyway, so this doesn't bother me at all! How can you get mad at someone who's growing food for you? I know, for those of you who do not know about farmers and think the grocery stores just magically grow your corn in the back of the store, the concept of a tractor stopping traffic may sound a little foreign but bear with me.
When I returned home to big city livin' in San Diego, I woke up to my cell phone ringing at 5AM alerting me that the Coronado Bridge was closed. This is the only efficient way to get onto the island from San Diego, so when it shuts down, its a huge deal and makes anyone who uses it to travel to work late for the day. Crossing the bridge usually takes 5 minutes. There is another route that takes an hour or so, depending on traffic--and of course, you could always take the ferry across, which leaves every couple of hours maybe. The point is, nobody wants to take the damn ferry or drive an hour out of their way to get to a place when there is a perfectly acceptable bridge that can take you there is 5 minutes!
Why was the bridge closed?? Well, this is where my blog may start to offend..
The bridge was closed because someone was standing up on it, threatening to jump the eff off. *enter long sigh here*
Before I moved to a place where this happens often, I would have been appalled at the thought of some poor, poor soul wanting to take his/her own life. And in all actuality, I still am, BUT...this shit is getting ridiculous. Now I have to tell you why I have such anger towards these people, and it has nothing to do with the fact that they cause traffic delays...all.the.time.
One sad Monday, months ago, it was raining. It had rained for two-three days here in ole' sunny CA. And if you live here, you know that when it rains, people revert to their five-year-old minds and lose all ability to operate a car. Imagine driving in a blizzard in south GA...people would panic. I mean, I remember when it snowed for 5 minutes a few years back and people dropped all their grocery bags, crashing buggies and sending tomatoes rolling across the floor, running towards the doors in order to get a glimpse of this thing called frozen water falling from the sky.
Anyway, I am sitting in traffic at 7:30 AM on the bridge which is eliciting a small panic in my own mind purely for the fact that there were billions of pounds of cars all sitting on this one slab of concrete and I couldn't for the life of my understand why were weren't all plummeting into the San Diego-Coronado Bay.
Two hours later, I arrived at my destination which should have taken me 30 minutes. I sit at work for the next fours hours and think about normal things again. Just a regular ole' day. Then, I got back into my car and started the drive home. It was sunny by this point so I figured that all the chaos from the rain would be over by now.
I sat in traffic again. For another hour, I inched along the 5 trying to get back to my house. I crept...and I inched...and I stopped...and I crept some more along the road...until I came to this bridge.
This picture is not from that day, but just picture rounding that little curve and looking over to your right and seeing a dead body laying there--right.outside.your.window.
I am so not trying to be insensitive to the issue of suicide. Really, I'm not. If I ever saw someone trying to hurt themselves, I'd do everything I could to help them. With that being said...
WHAT THE F&^K???
I am crazy enough without this kind of stuff happening in my vicinity. There is a reason I am not a coroner, or a police officer, or a doctor. I do not want to see dead bodies! Especially when I am not even expecting it!! If I were to ever, ever be okay with seeing a sight like this, I need a warning people--Like a funeral announcement! It has taken me months to get over this! I need therapy for a lot of other things, and this really almost sent me over the edge. Here is where my anger comes in...it is sad enough that suicide is a reality. It is. But how do you think that affects the people left here still breathing?? It angers me. I heard a story just the other day about a little girl who was in a boat with her family under the bridge one day that a man jumped off. She is traumatized to say the least. How the hell do you get over being splashed in the face by that?!
The point is not to make you cry or anything. The point people, is to tell you not to get angry at the tractors driving on the road in south GA. It could be worse. Just saying.
Happy Wednesday!
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