Venerable writer Chris Jones ponders the leap from the Golden Gate Bridge (Esquire)

The middle of the Golden Gate Bridge is 220 feet above San Francisco Bay. It looks higher than that in some ways. It doesn't seem nearly that high in other ways. The water, from 220 feet—the water that's straight down, at least—looks less like water and more like air. It looks more blue than green. It looks warmer than it is.

It looks softer.

People jump off that particular bridge for a lot of reasons. Maybe most important, it's convenient. Death is right there, waiting. The railing is only four feet tall; the fall is only four seconds long.

It doesn't hurt that it's such a pretty spot and it's romantic-feeling, and that maybe for the first time in their lives, the suicidal don't feel so alone there. On that bridge, they're finally part of something, this massive vanquished army, growing by the dozens every year.

And strangely, perhaps, many of them probably jump off that bridge because it gives them an outside chance of living. The bridge takes the matter out of their hands, as though it's not their decision anymore: If they were meant to live, if this were all some terrible mistake, then maybe they would survive. It's unlikely, but it's possible—it's possible for a man, even a man aiming to kill himself, to jump off that bridge at such an angle, at such a velocity, and not be exploded by the water but embraced by it.

The truth is, if you were totally positive that you wanted to die, if you were 100 percent certain, then there are better ways to guarantee it: shooting a bullet into your brain (not front to back, but side to side) or lying down on train tracks (not standing, but with your head resting on a rail) or jumping off something higher, with a harder landing. If you really wanted to kill yourself, you could do it. But sleeping pills, carbon monoxide, jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge—those methods, more peaceful, more serene, also provide that chance, however slim, that you might open your eyes and be alive. There's that tiny chance for a different kind of escape.

I thought all those things when I stood in the middle of that bridge one sunny, nearly perfect day in June more than three years ago. I thought all those things when I pulled myself tight against the railing and tried not to cry, choking on it so that no one would become suspicious or try to stop me. There were smiling people standing all around me, ice-cream-eating tourists thinking how beautiful everything was, pointing to spots on the horizon. I looked just like them, except that my eyes were pointed straight down. I looked at the water, and I thought about my parents, my wife, my sons back home, maybe having their dinner on their little plastic plates or playing in their inflatable pool, and more inanimate things, too: my suitcase in my hotel room, my glasses on the bathroom counter, my half-finished book on the nightstand with its corner folded over, page 164. Who would pack up my clothes and send them home? Would the police do that, or would it be a hotel employee, a maid or a concierge?

But mostly, I thought about jumping off that bridge because it seemed like exactly the right thing to do.