The haunted face of the teenage girl on the edge of the Bridge Over Troubled Water is obscured by her black and white skull branded hoodie, pulled tight over her head, with whisps of curly blond hair tousled out from the sides. She is huddled on a metal junction box, high above the fire breathing dragon of a dual carriageway below. She is lost in time and space.
I can feel her staring into the dark cavernous abyss, as I approach from the millionaire mansions of Mill Hill, on route to the secret gateway to the Sussex Downs.
And I sense all is not well, with this dramatic scene being played out before my eyes.
It is a scene being rolled out across the Island – of youth in crisis, youth forgotten, youth on the edge. The hood is up because the streets don’t take no prisoners. The hood is up because the family structure failed. The hood is up because the road is the only life they know. The hood is up because the system failed them from their long-forgotten birth right. The hood is up because their halo fell and cracked into tiny pieces on the rented concrete floor.
Treading warily towards the girl, she turns and fixes her gaze, a thousand-yard stare, into a stark reality show universe where the demons dance and the Voices holler.
Contemplating the jump.
Contemplating the speeding lines of the carbon commuters beneath her feet.
Contemplating a warm, welcoming, afterlife reception on the other side of the velvet curtain.
The Bridge Over Troubled Water is located at the top of hill of my sleepy housing estate. It is a Bridge I visited many times in the darkest nightmares of the thirteen years wandering like a zombie corpse in the Trenches. It is a Bridge where the demons would poke, prod, and persecute – with a psychopathic Hobson’s Choice laid bare by the Devil. To kill or be killed. To freely jump into the eternal fire, without so much as a pail of water to my besmirched name.
In these violent challenging moments, as the moon eclipsed my sorry arse, I would desperately claw in the dark night shadows for the neatly silver foil packaged downers stashed for emergencies in the white wicker basket on top of the bathroom cabinet.
And so, I have history with the Bridge, where crossing high above the maniacal motorway madness would make my bones shake, rattle, and roll with floods of fear, paranoia, and guilt.
The Bridge where I would gaze through the steel mesh barriers, at the crows gathering, cackling, and jeering at the dead man walking into the wilderness of the Sussex Downs.
Today, walking across the Bridge, I am fitter, happier, more productive, with a spring in the rubber soul of my trainers. As I approach the girl, I feel in the opening lotus flower of my heart, she is going to be OK.
And passing by her pure young soul – I pull up my hood in a singular show of support, strength, and solidarity.
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