Emmengard’s Suicide Scale Suicide Scale - Emmengard
- I am so happy that I will literally go insane if the happiness is sustained for any length of time.
- I am feeling pretty rad. I vaguely recall times I’ve been unhappy but it feels like distant memories now. Things are looking up.
- It is not the best day of my life… I have stuff on my mind, but I don’t think of suicide, except when that one weird friend brings up stupid hypotheticals.
- Suicide doesn’t occur to me except in moments of frustration or stress. It’s like a weird escape hatch my brain has decided to just go to in an attempt to escape stress. It doesn’t feel serious, it’s almost a joke. 5. The joke is getting really stale. Suicidal ideation and other intrusive thoughts keep happening, but I am mostly interested in other things. It’s like a low key death affinity. 6. I am thinking about suicide a lot. It has become troubling. I can distract myself if I really try, however if an out of control semi was headed towards me, I might not move. I am passively suicidal. 7. I cannot stop thinking about suicide, and unfortunately I cannot distract myself. I might be doing more risky things like driving recklessly or drinking to excess. I have graduated from passively suicidal to having a death wish. I need help.
- I am no longer fighting the thoughts, just sort of indulging in them. I sort of want to make the suicide plan, but I am stopping myself. I am holding on, but barely. It isn’t safe for me to be alone. I am suicidal.
- I am actively making a plan to end my life. I am telling people goodbye, settling accounts, and starting to write THE note. I am actively suicidal. I need to tell someone. 10. I am actively trying to kill myself. If I do not get medical attention it is very likely I will die.
One of the worst traps that mental health problems brings that often isn’t talked about is taking it from an episodic nature to chronic or passive. You may look at suicide and think you’d never do it, there are certain steps that must be taken to get you to the point where you’d consider it. But when the waters erode your shores more and more, it becomes the new norm. Meaning… the first times you are forced to indulge yourself further along the suicide scale, the more comfortable and familiar you are with each tick. I used to think I’d never contemplate it, would probably rate myself between 1 to 3 for most my life. That is until I was handed a sword, faced towards my demons, and told to fight them.
Upon discovering more and more what trauma’s I’ve been through, identifying the many fragmented shards of my fabulously eccentric mirror, I’ve edged ever closer along the scale to a 10. Now, my every day standard is sitting at a 5 or 6. Suicide is constantly on my mind, every time something goes wrong my thoughts are conditioned to look towards the emergency escape hatch and say “why not?“. In actuality, that escape hatch is my inner world, my Paracosm which begs I return home. I want to return home, I need to, tho it’s a battle every time that thought crosses my mind. In those hard times I graduate to a 7 quite immediately, the option is being presented to me constantly and it is here that I must manage myself or else I move further along. 7 to me is the comfortable contemplation, the balance between possibly seeing myself as alright in the future to spiraling into more dramatic acts.
8 is when I know that I need help, when I should be telling someone safe what’s going on. It is past my current boundaries for safety. An 8 is when I’ve been consumed by paranoia, traumas, delusions, when I am hopeless and nearing the absolute depths of my psyche. If I start planning then I feel as if I’m slowly losing more and more of myself to a dangerous slippery slope that no one returns from. Planning is the first final step. I have gotten to this point a handful of times. When my paranoia took over and killed my friendships, made my relationship with my partner shaky and almost end, when I almost had no one in my life anymore and my traumas neared their summits.
Though I’ve been to the realm of my darkness, my inner hell, and have come back, I do feel as if my previous encounter with an 8 wasn’t actually the trigger that would send me to oblivion. 9 is just as dangerous if not more so than an 8. I can tell you why I subscribe to the scale with it being a 9. To me, any preparation for this is bad. Having a final note of any kind is a form of inner acceptance that I’m so fucked I truly believe it would benefit me to have. That if I had my note ready then I could take more opportunities to die and not have to make preparations.
I fear 10, I fear the moment that I feel as if the best thing I can do for myself is to end my forced suffering. I am quite aware that my outlook on life is dark, bleak, and depressing, that I should change that outlook to better my health. Fuck that, I was forced into this world and given deep traumas that others will hardly understand, I will do with that as I please. Others cannot judge me for how I learned to traverse the brewing volcano with sharp igneous rocks strewn about its landscape. I grew up in this nightmarish hell-scape, it is what I know. A 10 would be being gripped by delusional convictions and coddled by Mother Death with the absolute feeling that I cannot be carried away to safety by chosen family, friends, or partner/s. It is when I’m so lost to myself that it is up to others to take me off that ledge. There is no certainty that my survival instincts kick in, that mental safe guards to tell my friends and find safety, or go to a hospital, would take over enough to happen.
What’s lesser so and not absolute in its self destruction is self harm. Similarly to suicidal ideation and living it passively self harm gains a sort of addiction. It’s often anecdotally said the adrenaline and endorphins are what get you addicted to self harm. There is a certain thrill to it. Self harm takes many different forms, many methods, many expressions. For me it is cutting. Cutting leaves scars, marks, its like drawing but instead of adding material you’re taking it away. Carving, etching. Instead of pretty pictures or designs it’s lines. Skin is much tougher than you think especially if you don’t have that great quality of knives. Rather than other forms like burning, poisoning, overdosing, etc. Cutting has a very controlled feel to it, I choose where it goes, how far deep, how long, how many.
I don’t know why my brain is this way, but how cutting leaves scars is beautiful to me in a way. It’s hard to describe. It’s a sort of externalized expression of inner pain, proof that I can show others how far my mental problems take me. It’s not good to want that, but I do. The itching desire to not stop at a couple scars but to make them more pronounced, noticeable to enjoy for myself, to permanently etch the horrors into my flesh. The first time that I sat down and cut myself I was actually in a pretty ok mood. Problem being I was coming off a mental health crisis and was researching self harm to make a care guide for others to help me if I ever did so. While reading through it all it sat in my mind and begged I try it, just once, after all I could just stop and not do it, right? The first time came and went unsuccessfully breaching the outer layer of skin. A few days later the itch returned, the curiosity for having a scar took over. Again, I was in an ok head space, only this time I learned that there is an addiction to it. I sat there cutting the same line over and over till I bled wondering wtf I was doing and why I couldn’t stop. I laughed at myself. Few more days later and I wanted more, I wanted to try a bit deeper, a bit longer. I cut my upper thigh again longer and longer till a bit of it gave blood, then I stopped. That time I stopped because the whole thing stung, it took too long, the blade was too dull and I feared applying more pressure. So I told myself next time I’ll have a sharper blade.
I haven’t cut in about a month now but I’ve the itch in my mind ever since, procrastinating getting that sharper blade that I can dedicate to cutting. A part of me is still processing it all, I still want to be beautifully scarred but if its to continue I need a system and it must be good. There is a bit of a paradox, some delusion, in that. In my dark turmoil where I find myself addicted to cutting and scoring my flesh I take care of myself. Yet outside of that I struggle to care as deeply.