The Day I Jumped Off A Bridge
When I was 24 years old, I jumped off a bridge. Believe it or not, it was not a suicide attempt. I ended up having to claw my way up a highway incline with 2 fractured vertebrae and a papaya-sized ankle that was non-functional. I was young and idealistic. It was 1994.
At this time there were no smartphones and Kurt Cobain was still alive. People still had to rely on others for survival. People still had conversations face-to-face. It was my final year of college at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
But why did I jump off a bridge?
The border collie in my mind was restless.
“If you have a creative mind, it’s a little bit like owning a border collie. You have to give it something to do or it will find something to do, and you will not like the thing it finds to do.”
-Elizabeth Gilbert
Last night as I was driving home I heard an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert. I felt like she was talking about my own life and my personal understanding of creativity. To me, creativity is an extension of curiosity. This is why I never could figure out what to call myself. Am I an artist? A writer? A freelance videographer? A learner? A teacher? I am all of these and so are you. If you dream at night, you’re creative. Everyone is. Everyone makes up stories at night. But few surrender to the whispers in the day.
I am a curious person who surrenders herself to the unknown on a regular basis. That is why The Museum of Jurassic Technology is my church. That is why a chance encounter with a book, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, led me to winning a trip to Los Angeles which enabled me to discover the real gems described in the book. There is magic all around us. We just need to become receptive to it. There is also destruction. Unmanaged and neglected curiosity will destroy you. If ignored over a lifetime, it will overtly destroy you or take its form as a shapeless, passionless mass of depression.
Back to the bridge.
I remember that morning vividly.
Upon waking, I was seized by an insatiable, maddening sense of curiosity and feeling of adventure. I felt the world had something great to teach me and if I didn’t seize upon this impulse, a great lesson would be lost. In a split second, I decided to skip all my classes and go on an adventure by myself to the other side of town, North Lawrence. The river, the run-down houses, the weird things that create the stuff of dreams were all there waiting for me. My mind was firing with endless exciting possibilities.
I wanted to find something different, something mind-blowing. I wanted to solve a mystery or at least find one. I wanted to let my mind roam free so it could have the space and time to create whatever it wanted, just like it did when it was little. Something in the unknown had its grip on my mind, like a stink ant with its spore, and I followed it blindly. I was happy that there was no war between what I should do: go to class and what I wanted to do: go on an adventure. Precisely because I had to go to class made the idea of an adventure feel even more irresistible.
I was under the tight spell of curiosity totally and completely.
I set out with nothing but my imagination.
Instead of doing my usual route by walking on the overpass, I decided to take the walkway underneath it. It was a little tricky to get to the narrow footbridge but it was doable and much more exhilarating.
After I had walked the entire length of the footbridge, I noticed that there were no stairs leading to the ground. There were two options: walk back from where I came or jump 12 feet down to the ground. I didn’t want to retrace my steps as that seemed like a waste of time. I figured I could reduce the length of the jump by hanging off the foundation. That way, I would only be technically jumping 6 feet instead of 12.
I gripped the foundation and hung off the side of it, looking down at the ground. I pushed aside my feelings of fear. It didn’t seem like a far distance to jump and I was pretty sure I’d jumped this distance before. I was in fairly good physical condition so I figured I could do this without issues.
I let go. Smash! Crack!
As my ankle crumbled under the weight of my body and my vertebrae absorbed the shockwaves, I knew I was in trouble. Pain shot up from my ankle and back and I started to scream, “AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH”. I looked around the empty field in which I was lying and quickly realized that no one could hear my screaming or crying, so I stopped.
I crawled towards the steep incline that led to the highway. My right ankle wasn’t functioning, so I used both arms and my left leg to ascend upwards. The incline was composed of rocks and by this point my forearms were bleeding from being scraped by them. When I got up to the highway, I leaned against the railing and waved my arms around violently until a police officer found me and called an ambulance.
As I was being carried away in the ambulance, I asked myself, “Is this the adventure that was calling me?”
I had to get a chest brace to ensure that my vertebrae healed properly. And I had crutches and an ankle brace. My best friend collected my assignments which I completed at home. When I returned to campus, I had a tough time explaining to people what happened. My answer depended on who asked it. To some I lied and said I had a biking accident and to my closest friends I told them I’d jumped off a bridge and miscalculated the distance. Whenever I said, “I jumped off a bridge”, I knew they were thinking I’d tried to kill myself. I knew I hadn’t wanted to die, but why was I so worried that people would think I attempted suicide?
I don’t know how to answer this question. I think on some level, my natural curiosity was dying to break free. It had been suppressed in order to complete a college degree. Somewhere inside me I have a deep desire to have intense experiences that shake the foundations of my knowledge. I want to get to the core of life’s mysteries and I want to understand how I cope in dire situations. I want to know about near death experiences and it’s my belief that I’ve used myself as a guinea pig to gain this understanding. I want to gain this knowledge because I’m curious about life, even it’s darkest aspects. I want to know everything about everything, even if it kills me.
And somewhere, in my brain, I might have a death wish.
Stellabelle is a writer, entrepreneur, driver, artist and curious person. She just finished her first non-fiction book, Un-Crap Your Life. She’s currently writing her second book, Survival Guide For Super Newbie Writers. James Altucher is her primary influence.
