My Confession

In my blog entry of Tuesday, May 6, 2008 I mentioned that at the end of April I cut my wrist seriously enough to warrant a trip to the ER. In response to the inevitable
'Was this a suicide attempt?' question I called it 'an 'Oh shit' moment'; I was drunk and cutting and I accidentally went too deep. Despite the fact that I had cut a vein and that it needed to be tied off I managed (thank God) to avoid a hospital stay. I did not, however, avoid a safety plan but that did not last more than a day any way (it was supposed to last a week but I could not find the date the night it was given to me. Since neither my roommate/'babysitter' or I knew when the plan was to end I got my stuff back the next day).

The thing is, it was not an accident (huh, admitting it, even though it is to you all who are -mostly- unaware of my identity, made me teary there for a moment).

Was it a suicide attempt? No, at least, I do not think so. However, I knew I was going to hit it the vein, I could see it. And as I kept cutting it became obvious that hitting the vein was my intent (though maybe it was not obvious to me at the time).

Hitting that vein was not what I was setting out to do at the start. The wrist bleeds really well even if you do not hit a vein (I have been told that is the case any way and I had been pretty successful in the past). I wanted to bleed, pure and simple. The cut was actually not new that night but rather a cut I was going over again a few days after I had first cut it (remembering that it had bled well). I cut. I bled. I bled most satisfactorily really. After a time I told myself 'One more cut' (same spot just going deeper). After that cut I decided to allow myself one more cut. And one more after that. I am not sure when it was I noticed how close I was to cutting a vein. I am not sure how often I allowed myself 'one more cut'. I am sure that I did eventually notice the (later) offending vein and still I continued to cut. Just once more, just once more. I knew I would hit it if I kept going, I knew it, but I continued on none less. And to be completely honest I am not sure I would have stopped before I hit it. I think the reason I was allowing myself ‘one more cut’, the reason I did not stop was that I wanted to hit it.

Was I trying to kill myself? I do not think so, no. And yet my continuing to cut in spite of the knowledge that I would cut that vein if I did seems to say otherwise. However I promptly (and calmly) got a towel on my wrist and applied pressure, got myself clothed (I was in the bath), and called around until I found someone to take me to the hospital (I could have asked my roommate to take me as at the time I cut it she was still at the apartment but she was just leaving and… I did not want to tell her *shrug*) which suggests otherwise.

I do not know. I do not know what to do with this information. I am not sure I know how I feel about it. I just do not know.

But there it is.