Michael Such - Waiting to Go

 

I was standing on the Millennium Bridge in the center of London. It was 02:00 AM, it was quiet. I could hear the water sloshing below me and the traffic in the distance. It was dark. It's never really dark in London. I see the lights, the buildings beside the river, and St. Paul's to my right, grand and majestic, and the Tate to my left. It was summer, but it was getting cold. I was anxious, agitated and leaning against the railing of the bridge. I remember this moment. It's frozen in my mind, because I wanted it to be my last moment. I thought I had just completely failed my exams at the end of the first year of university. I was feeling isolated, not part of the crowd. I was still a virgin, and I thought my whole life had just been a failure. 

 

I was always anxious and unhappy as a child. I remember crying in the playground at some simple game, because someone might possibly get hurt. I remember after they showed one of those child safety videos, being terrified of child snatchers and anxious to walk around my friend's house in our small rural Suffolk village and I remember lying on my bed on Saturday afternoons feeling listless and lost in low mood, but not knowing how to get out of it. I remember being picked on and called out for being awkward and ill-fitting and unable to stand up for myself at school. 

 

My escape from that was always the approval of the teachers. For all my frailties of mind and scattered decision making, I was always intelligent and obedient enough to draw praise from adults. Maybe that's what damned me. And so, at 18, I moved to London to study physics, Imperial College, to understand the universe even as I little understood my own mind and my own emotions. I was hopeful for a change, for the new setting to break my old habits. Things did improve that year. I made a new set of friends. I went out and partied more. I learned a lot, gained a larger measure of independence. But the borders of my anxiety still remained jagged, and they still held me back from things, big and small, like finding love and stupid simple stuff. 

 

Like, I remember lying on my bed in halls, and hearing my sink gurgle and a strange sewer smell fill the room, and thinking I should really go and tell someone and get that fixed. And then, being maddeningly terrified about the idea of that conversation and then thinking I'll do it next week, then the next and then never. Delay had always been my way of dealing with my anxiety and it leached into the other areas of my life. But delay isn't a very good response. The first year studying physics with theoretical physics, you've got a lot of problems to do and no one to tell you to do them. And with that delay came a tide of self-hatred which gradually swallowed me whole. 

 

And as I got towards the end of the year, I couldn't see a way out and I started to think about killing myself. And as I got closer to the exams, that feeling grew of dread and I started planning and I decided I would jump. I thought it would be simple, quick, clean. I picked the Millennium Bridge, because I knew it would be quiet and I was embarrassed and afraid of getting caught in the moment, more embarrassed and afraid somehow than the dying itself. And the exams came and I thought they didn't go well. My friends began to drift off at the end of the year and I didn't plan any big farewells, maybe there was some more poise in my goodbyes and maybe they knew something was up. 

 

I would occasionally drop out of social events or seem down, but I never reached out and asked for help. And so, I finally reached what I planned to be my last day. It was a Sunday. I don't remember a lot about it. I remember cleaning my room, and trying to leave things neat and tidy for when I was gone. I remember procrastinating on cleaning my room and playing video games. I think it's very difficult to really live any day as your last, because your mind can't really comprehend the idea of not existing, of nothingness and you catch yourself thinking, I'll do that next week. And finally, I closed up my room, I walked from my halls near Edgware Road to Imperial College, to the Millennium Bridge in the center of London. And I picked a route, which was self-consciously poetic. Past Hyde Park, past Buckingham palace, lit up in lights, past St. James'. 

 

As I walked, I was filled with a mix of abject terror and determination. I felt I had the unique knowledge that I was a terrible, inhuman, destructive figure, even though other people couldn't see it. I was almost pleased with myself that was somehow eliminating a problem as I saw it then. But beneath that, there were doubts still bubbling. So, I reached the bridge, I walked onto the bridge and then I delayed, growing anxious, my stomach turning between living and dying, holding onto the railing, looking out when people passed, trying to look normal and casual. And then, eventually, I walked to one side of the bridge, across the short width. 

 

And then, I ran across the width of the bridge. I remember my boots clanking on the metal. I pushed myself up on the railing. My hips hit the railing. I remember tipping over and the feeling of my feet kicking [unintelligible [00:44:05]. And then, a frozen moment, which I can still see. I am airborne and feeling a strange sensation of weightlessness. I'm looking down at the water, I'm thinking, [beep], I've really done it. That weird stomach feeling, something you imagined, seen on TV or thought about is really happening to you right now. I had an almost resigned acceptance of it. Maybe this was the wrong decision, but it was happening. I hit the water with a hard slap. I plunged deep down into the Thames and I found myself kicking up and swimming. 

 

I'd learned to swim from an early age. Saturday morning lessons followed by greasy spoon sessions with my parents. I wasn't supposed to do this. I was supposed to hold tight. But my body made another decision. And then, I was floating on my back down the Thames. Another frozen moment. I could see the light peeking over the embankment. I was very cold, I was wet through into my boots and I was trying to decide what to do next. I thought about letting go and trying to drown, but I realized I didn't have the commitment of that. And a thought passes through my mind, [beep], I'll just live. [audience laughter] 

 

I roll onto my front and I see as the current pushes me, another bridge coming up Blackfriars. I managed to catch myself on the support and see a ladder further down in the water and catch onto that as I push past it and haul myself out of the muddy water. I'm standing on the embankment. It's 03:00 AM. I'm soaked through. I'm feeling angry that I'm still alive. I'm feeling kind of lost what to do next, and the shock of what's just happened. And I decide the only thing I know to do is to walk back to halls. So, I take off, back through London. 

 

As I walk, I try and process what's just happened and decide what to do next. And the specter of dying seems to have resized the idea of failing exams. I'm thinking maybe I'll stick around for a while longer. And suddenly, I'm confronting the idea of having a future, of having to deal with the next year of living and maybe even 60 years of living, I might likely have. I'm still embarrassed I've done this and I'm still alive. I'm comforted to discover that London is exactly the kind of city which you can walk through in the middle of the night, soaking wet, dressed in all black and no one will pay attention to you. [audience laughter] 

 

I sneak back into halls and I go to bed. It's been 11 years since that night, and if I'm being honest, I'm still anxious, still lonely, I still struggle with stupid stuff like phoning the council to order more liners for your food waste bin. There's still a part of me which tells me that I'm a terrible person and didn't deserve to survive. But when I look back on that night, I realized my suicidal, depressed brain made a load of predictions, which my life has varied from immensely, in good and bad ways. Four years later, I graduated from Imperial with a first in physics. Maybe I shouldn't have listened to that voice. I watched Waiting for Godot recently and reflecting on this story, these lines stick with me. Estragon says to Vladimir, “I can't go on like this,” to which Vladimir replies, “That's what you think.”  Michael Such - Waiting to Go

 

 

 

I was standing on the Millennium Bridge in the center of London. It was 02:00 AM, it was quiet. I could hear the water sloshing below me and the traffic in the distance. It was dark. It's never really dark in London. I see the lights, the buildings beside the river, and St. Paul's to my right, grand and majestic, and the Tate to my left. It was summer, but it was getting cold. I was anxious, agitated and leaning against the railing of the bridge. I remember this moment. It's frozen in my mind, because I wanted it to be my last moment. I thought I had just completely failed my exams at the end of the first year of university. I was feeling isolated, not part of the crowd. I was still a virgin, and I thought my whole life had just been a failure. 

 

I was always anxious and unhappy as a child. I remember crying in the playground at some simple game, because someone might possibly get hurt. I remember after they showed one of those child safety videos, being terrified of child snatchers and anxious to walk around my friend's house in our small rural Suffolk village and I remember lying on my bed on Saturday afternoons feeling listless and lost in low mood, but not knowing how to get out of it. I remember being picked on and called out for being awkward and ill-fitting and unable to stand up for myself at school. 

 

My escape from that was always the approval of the teachers. For all my frailties of mind and scattered decision making, I was always intelligent and obedient enough to draw praise from adults. Maybe that's what damned me. And so, at 18, I moved to London to study physics, Imperial College, to understand the universe even as I little understood my own mind and my own emotions. I was hopeful for a change, for the new setting to break my old habits. Things did improve that year. I made a new set of friends. I went out and partied more. I learned a lot, gained a larger measure of independence. But the borders of my anxiety still remained jagged, and they still held me back from things, big and small, like finding love and stupid simple stuff. 

 

Like, I remember lying on my bed in halls, and hearing my sink gurgle and a strange sewer smell fill the room, and thinking I should really go and tell someone and get that fixed. And then, being maddeningly terrified about the idea of that conversation and then thinking I'll do it next week, then the next and then never. Delay had always been my way of dealing with my anxiety and it leached into the other areas of my life. But delay isn't a very good response. The first year studying physics with theoretical physics, you've got a lot of problems to do and no one to tell you to do them. And with that delay came a tide of self-hatred which gradually swallowed me whole. 

 

And as I got towards the end of the year, I couldn't see a way out and I started to think about killing myself. And as I got closer to the exams, that feeling grew of dread and I started planning and I decided I would jump. I thought it would be simple, quick, clean. I picked the Millennium Bridge, because I knew it would be quiet and I was embarrassed and afraid of getting caught in the moment, more embarrassed and afraid somehow than the dying itself. And the exams came and I thought they didn't go well. My friends began to drift off at the end of the year and I didn't plan any big farewells, maybe there was some more poise in my goodbyes and maybe they knew something was up. 

 

I would occasionally drop out of social events or seem down, but I never reached out and asked for help. And so, I finally reached what I planned to be my last day. It was a Sunday. I don't remember a lot about it. I remember cleaning my room, and trying to leave things neat and tidy for when I was gone. I remember procrastinating on cleaning my room and playing video games. I think it's very difficult to really live any day as your last, because your mind can't really comprehend the idea of not existing, of nothingness and you catch yourself thinking, I'll do that next week. And finally, I closed up my room, I walked from my halls near Edgware Road to Imperial College, to the Millennium Bridge in the center of London. And I picked a route, which was self-consciously poetic. Past Hyde Park, past Buckingham palace, lit up in lights, past St. James'. 

 

As I walked, I was filled with a mix of abject terror and determination. I felt I had the unique knowledge that I was a terrible, inhuman, destructive figure, even though other people couldn't see it. I was almost pleased with myself that was somehow eliminating a problem as I saw it then. But beneath that, there were doubts still bubbling. So, I reached the bridge, I walked onto the bridge and then I delayed, growing anxious, my stomach turning between living and dying, holding onto the railing, looking out when people passed, trying to look normal and casual. And then, eventually, I walked to one side of the bridge, across the short width. 

 

And then, I ran across the width of the bridge. I remember my boots clanking on the metal. I pushed myself up on the railing. My hips hit the railing. I remember tipping over and the feeling of my feet kicking [unintelligible [00:44:05]. And then, a frozen moment, which I can still see. I am airborne and feeling a strange sensation of weightlessness. I'm looking down at the water, I'm thinking, [beep], I've really done it. That weird stomach feeling, something you imagined, seen on TV or thought about is really happening to you right now. I had an almost resigned acceptance of it. Maybe this was the wrong decision, but it was happening. I hit the water with a hard slap. I plunged deep down into the Thames and I found myself kicking up and swimming. 

 

I'd learned to swim from an early age. Saturday morning lessons followed by greasy spoon sessions with my parents. I wasn't supposed to do this. I was supposed to hold tight. But my body made another decision. And then, I was floating on my back down the Thames. Another frozen moment. I could see the light peeking over the embankment. I was very cold, I was wet through into my boots and I was trying to decide what to do next. I thought about letting go and trying to drown, but I realized I didn't have the commitment of that. And a thought passes through my mind, [beep], I'll just live. [audience laughter] 

 

I roll onto my front and I see as the current pushes me, another bridge coming up Blackfriars. I managed to catch myself on the support and see a ladder further down in the water and catch onto that as I push past it and haul myself out of the muddy water. I'm standing on the embankment. It's 03:00 AM. I'm soaked through. I'm feeling angry that I'm still alive. I'm feeling kind of lost what to do next, and the shock of what's just happened. And I decide the only thing I know to do is to walk back to halls. So, I take off, back through London. 

 

As I walk, I try and process what's just happened and decide what to do next. And the specter of dying seems to have resized the idea of failing exams. I'm thinking maybe I'll stick around for a while longer. And suddenly, I'm confronting the idea of having a future, of having to deal with the next year of living and maybe even 60 years of living, I might likely have. I'm still embarrassed I've done this and I'm still alive. I'm comforted to discover that London is exactly the kind of city which you can walk through in the middle of the night, soaking wet, dressed in all black and no one will pay attention to you. [audience laughter] 

 

I sneak back into halls and I go to bed. It's been 11 years since that night, and if I'm being honest, I'm still anxious, still lonely, I still struggle with stupid stuff like phoning the council to order more liners for your food waste bin. There's still a part of me which tells me that I'm a terrible person and didn't deserve to survive. But when I look back on that night, I realized my suicidal, depressed brain made a load of predictions, which my life has varied from immensely, in good and bad ways. Four years later, I graduated from Imperial with a first in physics. Maybe I shouldn't have listened to that voice. I watched Waiting for Godot recently and reflecting on this story, these lines stick with me. Estragon says to Vladimir, “I can't go on like this,” to which Vladimir replies, “That's what you think.”