Does anyone else think about death a lot?
And killing yourself?

Yes.
My pain of body, only promises to increase Not so long ago a 17month minute, I lost John, my greatest friend and most helpful human in my struggle to survive.

My legs, arms, when my own gave out. Pain is my first waking thought from the reality of it before I get meds after an overnight break of maybe one or two hours over the limit of the ones the night before.

Many of the individual pains have a flashback with how they got there, assaulting my heart and head.....screaming body parts and screaming brain.

So yes, it crosses my mind.

... I should add that I am working on what I can control....the pain memories. So I can be that much at peace with living, at least. Also my loss of John, because like other things, it can't be undone...acceptance a worthy goal, for some relief of the brain screaming.

I make my living by teaching Death and Dying classes to nursing students at a community college, so yes, I think about it in depth every day.

It goes back to being in a car that got bombed with me in it when I was 9 years old. PTSD. I grew up in a war zone overseas. Being engulfed in flames in a car because someone hit it with a bomb made me realize my mortality at a young age. I was on my way to buy ice cream.

The war went on for 6 more years, most in my neighborhood. I was in another bombing of a building and listened while a man died in front of me buried under concrete in the wreckage afterwards. I was 11 when that happened. I was on my way to go bowling.

So I became a hospital chaplain and my work was to sit with people as they died from 2001 to 2010. Then I got kidney disease and it wasn't found until an advanced stage, and I had to become a teacher instead because I couldn't be on my feet in a hospital.

Now I could die from kidney disease, though I'm glad that even if it can't be cured, it has stopped advancing for now.

So yes, death has been with me at every stage of my life. I'm not afraid to die. I'm not afraid, even, of being alone. I am afraid to suffer.

If it came to the point where my suffering couldn't be alleviated with pain medication, then I would consider suicide. Actually, it would be a "Do Not Resuscitate" order and it would really be euthenasia then.

I don't think about suicide for relief from my emotional suffering, I suppose, because since age 9 I've been trying to survive crazy people throwing bombs at me and so forth. Whenever as an adult suicide has crossed my mind as relief for emotional suffering, I don't choose it in honor of the child that I was that managed to survive war.

That little boy is still in me, and he deserves to be honored. So as an adult I have committed to more therapy, meds, or support group work instead, in honor of him, because he was no quitter.

That's just me. I totally do understand emotion pain strong enough to lead to thoughts of suicide as a remedy, though for me it's uncontrollable physical pain that's the bigger issue. Fortunately, I experience pain and numbness in my feet from neuropathy caused by kidney disease and it is nagging and chronic, but not yet at that level.

Just speaking for me. Thanks for creating a thread and asking.

Sometimes. If I'm down, I tend to romanticize taking myself out of this world.

But when it comes down to it, I've got a great life, so no plans to end it any time soon.

More often, I fantasize doing really inappropriate things. Like saying "This is BS" but with the full words in a faculty meeting.