One-unders

At lunchtime yesterday, as the United States was celebrating the victory of America’s first African-American president and Great Britain was preparing for their annual bonfire night – to commemorate the life of the English Roman Catholic revolutionary, Guy Fawkes – a London man threw himself under a train at Liverpool Street station.

Announcements were made over the intercoms of all London Underground lines apologising for the delay to services, as there was a person under a train. These pre-recorded broadcasts are replayed over and over, lacking in emotion and evoking even less from the crowd of passengers inconvenienced by the suicidal person’s final statement; the frequency of such tube announcements resulting in a numbing of society.

Maybe it was because I wasn’t in much of a rush yesterday, but for some reason hearing this news truly made me stop and be thankful for all the ‘good’ I have in my life. Because this guy obviously thought his had hit rock bottom.

Last year in the UK, 194 people killed themselves on the tracks of mass-transit systems, with 50 of those people taking their final leap in the depths of the Underground (this compares with New York’s average of 26 subway suicides each year).* I remember years ago hearing of one of my sister’s friends jumping, a boy she’d known through her school years, he was barely twenty-five.

They call them “one-unders”. And emergency services are on alert each day, ready to clean up the debris, in the interest of an efficient transport system. Apparently the peak hour for tube suicides is 11am – when everyone else is deliberating about what to eat for lunch.

I can’t imagine the horror of feeling that your only option out of the mess and pain of your life is to throw yourself head first into an oncoming train. There can be no more public display of your agony. And then there’s the driver. They get a front row seat as you smash against the windscreen of their train; having your bloody mess of a body etched into their memory long after your ashes are gathering dust. I maintain a belief that suicide is the ultimate selfish act, for it’s those around you – the living – that are forced to deal with all the problems you decided you couldn’t face anymore.

So my heart goes out to the family and friends of yesterday’s jumper. He’s nameless. It seems that with an average of one tube suicide each week the deaths of these people are no longer newsworthy.