"So this is it. We're going to die."

[foxgrrl]

At one point in the last several days, I found myself in a situation where I said to myself: Oh shit! So this is it, this is how I die&hellip […] (Oh, I'm still alive.) In hindsight I wasn't really in any danger. Whenever I have one of these experiences, it really reminds me of just how much I really love being alive despite all the pain. That, and I really feel like I'm not done yet. There's something I'm supposed to be doing on this Earth — I don't know what it is, so I could be doing it right now for all I know.

After the previous time this happened to me (a few months ago), I wrote the following farewell to a friend:

This is Julia. I want you to know that life is a gift, and you should cherish every beautiful moment of it. Be Well.

Another thing that I have observed about myself in these moments, is the entire rest of my brain/mind very rapidly formulating survival plans, to immediately get out of the situation. It's almost like an automatic reflex.

If you've ever found yourself in one of these situations where you've thought to yourself that you were going to die. What were the last thoughts which ran through your head?

Comments

[adapt.livejournal.com]

Briefly waking up while on life support and hearing doctors talking about how it was a toss-up whether I'd make it, and thinking, without words, that it had all been worth it, all of it. Then falling asleep and not coming back for another week.

Very similar thoughts a year after that as a car I was in lost traction and skidded over a divider, through oncoming traffic, and nose-dived into a ravine almost vertically.

It crystallized, more or less, into "hey, I guess that did make sense, and it was pretty OK". Both times it faded after, but knowing that all the great, not-so-great, and sometimes straight-out awful that populates any life _can_ make sense stayed with me.

As in "gosh, [x] event seems pretty awful right now, and I don't understand why it's happening, but I know that where _is_ a why, somewhere."

I'm bad at explaining these things. You could say that it's just a coping mechanism I guess, a way of protecting the mind from dealing with the possibility of its own demise ... but it'd take some doing to convince me.