Last installment from Business Insider article…
“He finally jumped based on the thought that “nobody cares.”
“My first thought was, ‘What […] did I just do? I don’t want to die,'” Hines told The New Yorker.
Then-28-year-old Ken Baldwin, like Hines, chose to hurdle over the bridge’s railing rather than stand on it first because he didn’t want to lose his courage to jump. Although he was severely depressed on that day in 1985, he changed his mind the moment after his leap. “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable – except for having just jumped,” he said.
That indecisiveness is explained by suicidologist Edwin S. Shneidman, according to a review of his works by Antoon Leenaars:
The prototypical psychological picture of a person on the brink of suicide is one who wants to and does not want to. He makes plans for self-destruction and at the same time entertains fantasies of rescue and intervention. It is possible – indeed probably prototypical – for a suicidal individual to cut his throat and to cry for help at the same time.
The period where the chance of lethal suicide is at its highest and most dangerous is relatively short, typically just hours or days rather than months, according to Shneidman.
Of course, not all suicides are impulsive, as some are the result of extensive planning and conviction. Impulsive suicide involving decisions made in as little as five minutes is one of two types generally seen among patients suffering from depression, according to Dr. Charles Nemeroff.
The other type involves “the sort of classic notion that, I’ve been hopeless and helpless for so long. I’m hopeless that I’ll ever be better, and I’m helpless to do anything about it,” Nemeroff said. That type often includes planning, notes, and goodbyes.” End of article.
So Shlomo Hamelch was correct when he wrote “this too shall pass”. Literally, when it looks the bleakest, as long as there’s life there’s hope.