That is a good question. Personally, I find that there is very little warning before I would actually self harm. (I haven't done it for 2 years now). I would feel an intense feeling of being trapped in a situation, unable to get out and just suddenly blow. When I did let go, the attacks on myself would be extremely violent, viscous and cause a great deal of damage. It used to scare me because I thought that if I was capable of doing that to myself, was I capable of doing it to someone else. Now I know that isn't the case, but the extreme violence scares me. During the past few weeks, I've had four or five close calls and one time I thought I was going to comitt suicide.

In retrospect, I can now see that there was a pattern when I was doing the worst damage. About two weeks prior to an incident, I'd start noticing sharp objects. There weren't any real thoughts associated with it, just a double take on a knife or razor. That would advance to brief thoughts about what the object in question could do if I used it. Those thoughts were usually within a couple days of an incident. When the attack came, there was virtually no time between the thought and the actual attack.

Shortly before the last set of attacks, when I got to the point of thinking about what an object was capable of, I would give the object to my good friend. There was an unspoken agreement that we would pretty much stay together 24-7, but in the end, it would happen anyway. She might be gone for a few minutes, and I'd grab a knife, go into the bathroom and boom, carnage.

It ended two years ago after a four day spree. I made one horribly deep cut each day for four days. The last one almost killed me. As usual, I shut myself in the bathroom and very deeply lacerated my leg down into muscle and a relatively large vessel. I just sat there stupidly watching the blood pool, then form a river and start flowing under the space under the bathroom door. Had my friend not seen the blood spilling into the hallway, i would have bled to death and never lifted a finger to stop it even though suicide was not the intention. I was sick for a while after that. Very pale, weak and depressed. I made my friend a promise that I would never again do that. I saw how terrified she was although she handled it very well. The thought of betraying the trust of that promise has been enough to stop me from self harming again. I have deep scars on both lower legs with areas of numbness and other areas that feel like I'm getting a shock when my pants hit the spot. I was lucky that I didn't wind up with a blood clot or loss of the limb. As it was, my legs were swollen as they formed new vessels to help return the blood from my lower legs back up to my heart. It could have ended very differently.

Sam2