MERRILLVILLE, Ind. -- Eric walks slowly with a stutter in his gait and a cane at his side. If he lifts his black pant legs, there are clear plastic braces wrapped around both shins, but he does not hobble, and he is not visibly tattooed with any permanent scars.\nHe does not look like a man who has suffered two broken vertebrae, two fractured femurs, two dropped feet, a shattered right knee, a bruised heart and a punctured and deflated lung. \nHe does not look like a man who is pieced together inside by titanium rods, pins and plates.\nHe does not look like a man who survived an eight-story plunge from the top floor of Ballantine Hall less than a year ago. But Eric did, and now he is getting better. \nThe 23-year-old Eric, whose last name is being withheld to protect his privacy, spent 2 1/2 months in a hospital bed overcoming what he now knows was a big mistake. On April 19, 2004, he ran up the front flight of stairs at Ballantine, smashed a chair through the bolted window and sentenced himself to death. But somehow, with the floors he'd just climbed flying past him in reverse faster than he could comprehend, Eric did not die. "I didn't have time to think," he said. "It was just, I was there and then so fast out. I shut off the world and I went as far as I could, and then all of a sudden I woke up and I was in the hospital."
FALLING DOWN\nEric decided he had to kill himself five minutes before he tried, but the problems leading to his decision festered for a much longer time. He said he turned to drugs and alcohol while at IU, eventually abusing them at a rate that began to leave his day-to-day responsibilities unfulfilled. Grades began to slip and bills weren't being paid. Things were not going smoothly.\nEric shies away from revealing the full extent of his problems, and it is clear there are demons he fought that he still will not divulge.\n"What I tried to use to make my experience at college better made it a lot worse," Eric said. "They led me to a point where I wasn't taking care of regular things. I wasn't taking care of my schoolwork and my responsibilities."\nHis life reached a boiling point the morning of April 19. With the semester's classes all but lost, Eric went to Franklin Hall to drop his entire schedule.\n"I was going to fail all of them," Eric said. "When I saw that line that said 'Sign your name here,' I thought I was signing my life away. And it was in that moment I said that (suicide) was the only answer."\nWith stories of a previous student who jumped from Ballantine Hall weighing on his mind, Eric went directly from Franklin to the campus' tallest academic building. He ran up all 177 steps, passing students headed for class along the way but phasing them out completely.\n"Had there been another method, it would have been another method. It would have been a gun or a knife or anything like that," Eric said. "But it was instant. I was in a zone, I had complete tunnel vision. I didn't have another concern in the world. ... It wasn't preplanned at all, it wasn't premeditated. I was in a state of mind where I thought it was the only answer to where I'd gotten myself in. I completely forgot that other people existed."
REGAINING STRENGTH\nSenior Nate Polite heard screams and saw students gathering outside Ballantine midday April 19. Polite, who is an IU EMS volunteer, rushed to the scene expecting to find a car accident.\nInstead he saw Eric lying atop Ballantine's front awning.\n"I expected the worst," Polite said. "I didn't think I could do much. But I was surprised by the condition he was in. He was better than I expected." \nEric can't remember the fall, and he has only a brief snapshot in his memory of a firefighter approaching his battered body. The next thing he remembers is waking in a Bloomington Hospital bed, his body aching and his legs disfigured.\nEric knew immediately where he was and that he was alive, though he said he has no idea to this day how much time elapsed between the jump and when he regained consciousness. He awoke to a hospital room with his aunt, his mother and a nurse surrounding him.\n"They asked me if I wanted something to drink," Eric said. "I asked for an orange soda. It was the best tasting thing ever in my life."\nStill, Eric does not use the word "happy" to describe his mentality when he awakened, even when pressed.\n"I was surprised to be alive," he said. "I was perfectly OK with being alive. I wasn't upset, that's for sure. But I was surprised. People around me were happy, so I guess that made me feel good, too."\nEric would remain in a hospital for 2 1/2 months -- eventually moving from Bloomington to Methodist Hospital in Crown Point, Ind. Family members, friends, teachers and acquaintances visited Eric, but he began to feel detached from life.\n"Especially after being in a hospital for a couple months, you kind of lose touch with your life," Eric said. "You lose touch with reality when you're in a hospital bed for a long time."\nHis doctors were not specific on the matter, but Eric did not think he would ever walk again.\n"It was me. I put it on myself that I wouldn't be walking anymore," he said. "When I was in that bed and I saw my legs, ... it was just a bad sight. I just couldn't believe I'd be getting much better. But I've gotten a lot better than that."\nFor a time, Eric was restricted to a wheelchair. Then a walker, and then crutches. Now he uses a cane his sister gave him for Christmas with a bamboo decoration by the handle. \nThese days Eric spends a lot of time with his family in their Merrillville home. His injuries preclude him from driving, which has stopped him from working, he said. Eric spends much of his time sleeping, helping out around the house or working through intensive physical therapy to rebuild his legs. \nHis recovery is in large part thanks to that physical therapy, which he does two to three times a week in addition to working out every day on his own. His doctors think Eric ultimately will not need his cane. \nEmotionally, Eric said he is better now than he has ever been before.\n"I do a lot more thinking now," he said. "I care about more things than I did before. I have more concerns about family, people I know and things in general."\nTo this day, Polite is still amazed that Eric lived at all.\n"I just can't understand how he survived," Polite said. "But I think it was meant to be that way."
RISING AGAIN\nFor Eric, a criminal justice major who toyed with the idea of a career in law enforcement, returning to IU will not be an emotionally trying experience. It is something he is considering doing as early as next fall.\nEven going back to Ballantine doesn't concern him.\n"I don't know if I'd have a problem," Eric said. "But I'd have a problem getting up there because I have trouble with stairs now. I can climb stairs, but it's a lot slower than before."\nAnd there is little worry that Eric would do what he did again. He said he regrets his decision and considers himself "blessed" to have survived. If he could go back and change it, he would. \n"If it were possible, I would," he said. "I would say it's better to admit your mistakes and start over than atone for them in the drastic way I did."\nHis regret is reflected in a more personal medium as well. Eric keeps an online journal, which includes entries running all the way up until a little before midnight on the eve of his jump. In one entry from late November, Eric wrote about his childhood -- about how he used to weep as his mother sang "You Are My Sunshine" at his bedside.\n"When she sang the 'Oh please don't take my sunshine away,' I imagined some bad man that might take me away, probably in a black top hat and a curly mustache," he wrote. "And six months ago, that bad man was me."\nAlthough he publishes his journal, Eric also guards his privacy. He said his only concern in returning to IU is possibly being over-recognized, forever defined by what he did than by who he is. He declined to have his parents interviewed for this story and did not want to have a photograph of his face accompany it.\n"Come on Eric, let them see your face, you have your old man's good looks," his father joked in their Merrillville home.\n"No, I don't want to be famous just yet," Eric replied. \nThat comment reflects a meaningful and positive future Eric still believes he can have. With all he's been through, he does not pause even for a moment when asked why he survived.\n"Because I was supposed to," he said. "I can leave it at that."\n-- Contact Staff Writer Gavin Lesnick at glesnick@indiana.edu.
