How would you like to die?

old
in reasonable good health
in my own bed
with my family doing well and happy
surprised by my own death

Swift, mercifully and painlessly.
I would prefer it to be a surprise !
( obviously one I will never get to appreciate or acknowledge)

Old, watching TV. A pretty nurse in uniform is in the room. She's bored, but she laughed just now at the same thing on TV that I did. I feel oddly sleepy all of a sudden. I lose my consciousness and that's it.

emillionth wrote:Old, watching TV. A pretty nurse in uniform is in the room. She's bored, but she laughed just now at the same thing on TV that I did. I feel oddly sleepy all of a sudden. I lose my consciousness and that's it.

There's a theory that in death your last mortal thought gets stuck in a loop that seems eternal as you slowly lose consciousness forever. The nurse, in uniform, would suggest that you're in a hospital. Everybody knows the only thing that ever plays on hospital TV's is either Matlock or Friends reruns.

Be careful what you wish for!

Eh, as long as it's not a Ross & Rachel episode.

David Schwimmer is what happens when you confuse your baby's head with a lemon.

I've often thought about this. A stray bullet or an undetected asteroid are my preferences. (Highly unlikely scenarios).. Failing this, I am now looking at somehow obtaining Nembutal.

The first time I had a suicidal thought it actually startled me. Up to that point I'd never felt like a depressed person. I've always fought the label when people tried to pin it on me. Doctors especially.

Not that depression isn't very serious, but it always struck me as the kind of diagnosis a doctor puts down when they have a box to check, like a placeholder. None of the advice or resources about it sounded like me, much less helped. I fought about a year to get the correct diagnosis.

I can see why people are baffled at the thought that someone like me could very seriously want to die, but be in no pain at all. I'm not aggressively sad, or, anything else really. I don't feel like a burden, or like people would be better off without me, or like I'm so bad of a person I "deserve" to be dead. I think I'm a fine person, pleasant even. But the reality is I've still had this quiet desire to be dead every day for nearly ten years. It doesn't get any better or worse. I never get closer to acting on it or spend a lot of time dwelling on it. It's just... there.

I used to lay in my parents' back yard a lot. Just me on the dirt. This was before I was medicated, so I was spacy and numb a lot of the time. I'd lay back there for hours and want to die. Not in a violent or self-loathing way, but like, "Okay I'm done now." Like if in that moment I had a button I could push that would take me out of existence I would press it. I used to imagine the earth swallowing me up like that part in Trainspotters, or going to bed and never getting up. Just like, dissolving into the mattress.

Having anxiety complicated things. I get these really intense panic spikes that come out of nowhere. Because nothing seems to trigger an attack, my brain does its best to make sense of the terror I'm feeling and translates it into a desire to kill myself. Like, in a backwards self-preservation. To escape the situation. Like it wanted me to hit the eject button out of this body in huge amounts of discomfort. Then it goes away and I'd be more exhausted than ever. That's usually when I'd go to the yard.

The closest I actually came to "making a plan" (major air-quotes there), I thought about using my gran's gun. I don't like guns, and I've never shot one before, but it seemed like the quickest option. Of course, then you start to read about people that shoot themselves and aren't successful, who wind up vegetables or with half a face or something. This might just be me, but I'd always read stuff like that and kick at the sand like a Little Rascal going, "Aw, rats." Then go back to whatever I was doing.

I'm with the rest of you. If I didn't go suddenly, like in a car crash or a bomb dropped or something, I'd want to go very peacefully and painlessly. Wink out. Preferably before I get too old and sick that I need other people to take care of me.

I would prefer to die early before all my relatives so I won't have to spend the rest of my life taking care of them in their old age

Unexpectedly, quickly and while I'm still otherwise in good health.