I was talking to someone the other day about suicidal ideation, as you do. Well, not suicidal ideation, per se; we were actually talking about the impulse to throw yourself off a very tall building or some other impressive height and the way it just seemingly happens, at random, without warning. I made some half-joke along the lines of, I don’t really get that because I don’t want to kill myself, and was told in a two-part statement that was at once entirely correct and impressively incorrect that (a) the urge to throw yourself into the air from a great height isn’t really an attempt to kill yourself, actually, and also (b) everyone wants to throw themselves off a tall building, anyway.
The first part of that is very true; it’s called — somewhat darkly — “the call of the void,” and it’s apparently a very common variation on the fight-or-flight response to the inherent danger of being in a position where you might fall to your doom: why not just take matters into your own hands, instead? (The “call of the void” name apparently derives from the original French term, which of course sounds much better: “L’appel du vide.” Who doesn’t want to have some l’appel du vide, when you put it like that?)
It’s the second part that I had the problem with, because I’m someone who still feels nervous walking the (impressively fenced) bridge over the highway on the walk home from one of our local movie theaters, despite the fact that I do it multiple times a year for, essentially, the entire decade-plus that I’ve lived in the city. I certainly have no desire to throw myself off a tall building, and everything being equal, I don’t even feel comfortable being in any location where that could conceivably be an option, anyway.
I’m explaining all of the above when my brain suddenly remembers, no, that’s not entirely true: there was that one time earlier this year. I was standing on the top floor of the Seattle Convention Center, right at the edge of the floor in front of a floor-to-ceiling window and watching the traffic move past five or so stories below and I did actually feel that unavoidable but what if I jumped moment. At the time, I was deeply uncomfortable and moved away from the window immediately, making a joke in my head about I know the year has been shitty so far, but come on now or the like, but it stayed with me for a couple of days afterwards, that sense of “why did I feel that?” before I looked into it and found out about the call of the void.
That said, part of me almost wishes I had tried it, mostly because what would have happened wouldn’t have been me falling to my death, but instead me faceplanting against some very thick glass before coming to my senses and moving on far faster, all things considered.