Judge, Jury, and Executioner

By Andi Van den Berge (Andi VdB)

I am a wrist cutter. Or rather, I did it once. Had things happened with a thirty-second difference, I could be dead. The slice was lethal. When it happened, I didn’t think I was suicidal. In fact, it was the first thing I assured the paramedics. They believed me. So did everyone at the hospital. 

The ambulance brought me into the emergency room, and I was warned that the hospital may place me in F-pod, but hopefully, they would not. F-pod was the psych wing of the emergency room. I was not. They put me in E-pod, which I soon realized was where they brought patients overdosing on drugs. I listened to agony screamed from the rooms flanking mine while I waited in the doctor’s queue. I felt relieved when the patients started throwing up. Anything to stop the siren of pain. I think all of us wanted to die to some degree that night, even the nurses.

I joked with the doctor as she stitched my arm back together. Ten stitches, spaced a centimeter apart, that was what it took to close the wound. I didn’t feel anything when it happened. I’m not sure how much force I used, but the second I realized what I’d done, I screamed for help. 

I couldn’t get to my phone because my only non-injured arm was holding the other one together. My spouse was in the middle of storming out. We had just fought. The fear in my voice scared me. I screamed Call 911 over and over with a staccato cadence. Had I not been loud enough, had the door already slammed shut, what then? The rate at which blood filled and spilled out of the gash, the blood splashed on the wall, and pooled on my thighs, I would have died. 

And if I had, my death would have been ruled a suicide, and I would have died with no note. My psychiatrist reminded me that with my family history, the ruling of my death would only be confirmed. By that, she meant my dad’s suicide when I was fifteen. I’d often wondered if I would end with the same fate, even before my father died.

I’d promised my mom never to put her through that twice. I promised that no matter how bad my depression got, I would never end my own life. I’d written suicide off and set it aside in a no-pass section of my brain. I’d been close to considering it before, suicide, but I’d never cut into myself. As a teen, I may have scratched at the surface of my skin, but I was terrified of the physical pain of going any further. Those last moments of life, right before all of my pain would end, what if it happened slowly? 

The more time between the event that put me in the Emergency Room and the present, the more I’m able to look at my arm. Look at the scar. Sometimes I can even run my finger along it, acknowledge it. And I’ve started to wonder if maybe I could have been suicidal in that moment. 

The night that I did it, I felt nothing. I’d filleted my arm open. The paramedics recorded it as three inches long and an inch and a half wide, but no physical pain, just blood everywhere. When I think back to that night, I feel like this is dangerous information to hold on to. How quickly the shock took over the moment I split my flesh. I only felt pain when the doctor injected lidocaine to numb me before sewing me back together. My unconsciousness knows too much.

It felt like I’d fallen out of my own body when I stumbled up the stairs, as I tore the bathroom apart looking for anything sharp. It happened so fast, I don’t think my consciousness chose my actions. A hyena was in the driver's seat, not me.

Before I ran upstairs, the fight my spouse and I were in, I couldn’t take it. I was being small, curled into myself, sitting on the beanbag. Sitting on the floor. My cheeks and chest covered in a sheen of tears, I asked if we could pause the fight because in that moment, I could not take any more hurt. I was berated for being selfish. Only a few seconds to be pushed beyond my limits.

The next moments happened quickly, and I only realized how little time had passed because of what my spouse was doing below me in the kitchen. The storming out of the condo by my spouse began when I ran upstairs. Spouse was still in the kitchen when I screamed bloody murder. 

I’d sworn to my spouse, the paramedics, the nurses, the doctor, and to myself that I had not attempted suicide, but had I? My mind tends to think itself in circles when there is no logic or truth to latch onto. So how do I find the truth? How do I dissect what happened and examine it against my testimony, when I am the judge, the jury, and the executioner? 

The only one with the information. My consciousness versus my unconsciousness. All the evidence is circumstantial. I am the only one with all the pieces of the puzzle. I’d taken a backseat while my body rushed to the bathroom that night. I watched myself search for a sharp object, any sharp object. 

But still, I was the one who acted—the one who committed the violence against myself. I can confess as a witness and a suspect. I should know the motive of the prosecuted, but I don’t. All I have is the damage done. 

I want to know that I won’t do it again. I want to say I wouldn’t, but something happens in my gut when I do. It’s unknown. I have no lucid thoughts of dying or wanting to take myself there. I hope for life, for love, for trust, but for now, I do it from the shadows.

By Andi Van den Berge (Andi VdB)