I just poured some of my guts out here.

If my son and daughter hadn't been here in the years since, I probably wouldn't be here today. Just too much.

Now, I'm doing much better. I'm glad to be here for my family, and I'm glad for my job, albeit less than the family. I get to be someone's angel a couple times a day (at home and at work), and my boss is outstanding.

What are you looking for?

I've never thought about ending it. I like being alive.

Last year I had abdominal surgery, which was supposed to be keyhole surgery but which turned into full open-me-up surgery complete with 10-inch wound. The reason for that was my weird anatomy around my liver, which neither I nor the surgeon knew about in advance. Had he proceeded with the keyhole operation there's a very good chance he could have severed things that shouldn't be severed, which in turn could very easily have killed me.

I had a hard time around the surgery - 6 hours on the table instead of 1, and then my blood pressure refused to rise to levels that are compatible with basic functioning for a good while afterwards. I'm fine now, but I try to take a little time each day to think about that period in my life and be thankful I'm still here, and that I had a good surgeon.

I think that being alive generally sucks. Otherwise, I have a great life.

I've never intentionally come close but have had lots of accidents over the years. I've had at least three car wrecks that could have been fatal if things had been slightly different and I worked as a house painter for years and spent most of my time 40 feet in the air.

As for the intentional part, it really never crosses my mind. Even when it sucks the world is a pretty darn interesting place to live in. I've never walked out of a movie and I'm damn sure that I'm going to try to see as much of this life as I can. I'm forty-five and I'm pissed that I only get 30 to 40 more years to run.

I had a severe blood clot when I was in my late twenties. It was a very stark experience. Young men are internally immortal and to have your frailty put in front of you like "You Are Here" sign is quite an experience. As a friend of mine put it, you don't look into the abyss without the abyss looking into you.

Medical conditions could have killed me three times over to date. The preciousness of life is not lost on me.

Every minute I'm alive, I'm closer to death than the last.

As an adult, I'm a clutz. As a kid, I had an unknown death wish.

I've been hit by a car and nearly strangled myself on a school jungle gym - not in a ha-ha way, in a very real omg I almost really died way.

Though he is the love of my life, sometimes my husband's driving also puts me in fear for my life... New York drivers aim a lot.

What's the closest you've come to death?

A few feet. We played chess. Luckily, he kind of sucks.

I triumphantly emerged from a sort of metaphysical crisis not too long ago after years of persistent thoughts of death.

I've had too many personal brushes with death to count (I was a very sick, very premature baby; parent's worst nightmare, etc, but I can't remember any of it. I'm also tremendously accident prone), but the closest I ever came to feeling the touch of death was 20 minutes after my father died, I rested my hand on his arm and my fingers started sinking in, so I started making patterns of indentations. That's when I realized that he had truly ceased to be alive. Death took on a whole new meaning and I lived with an incessant fear of death for the next 9 years.
Now, Death and I came to an understanding, and I've developed some pretty spiffy concepts to help me deal with the eventuality, so the fear is (mostly)gone.

When I stopped a cop to call an ambulance because I could no longer breath. Turned out I had congestive heart failure and my lungs were full of fluid. Even the oxygen mask in the ambulance didn't really help much, because my lungs were so full I couldn't inhale much. That's a scary feeling. Thank god for diuretics.

A few times...pretty glad I didn't, now you come to mention it.

I've been thinking about mortality of late...and I've realized that now that I'm closer to it...I'm a lot less comfortable with it than I was when I was 20 and invincible. It should be the other way around, I think. The closer you get to the inevitable, the more you should be able to make your peace...but that's just now how I'm dealing at all. Bad philosopher, no biscuit!

I've had a couple brushes with drowning. Being alive is so much better than not.

Hadjoboy, please read this. How Not to Commit Suicide. There are effective anti-depressants. Life is precious; please don't cast it away.

Well, I had two ER experiences last year. The first was because I was becoming diabetically hyperosmolar. For about two weeks, amid enormous family stress mostly due to my dad's increasing dementia, I had been feeling "flu-ey" on and off, and in the middle of this my cat Fry caught a bat in the house. I became convinced that I had rabies and was going to die, and spent a couple of days arranging my affairs (yes, this does seem odd) before going to the hospital. They diagnosed my sky-high blood sugar pretty quickly and started to rehydrate me and prescribed a standard glucose controller, and I was pretty fine after that, especially once I began losing weight. But they said if I'd waited even hours longer I could have fallen into a coma and that would mean, if I were lucky, a few days recovery in the hospital and if I were unlucky ....

(A neighbor of ours died after falling off a ladder because he had a glucose extreme. One way.)

The second was only a few weeks later, when I observed a probable heroin delivery down the street and (yes, this was dumb) was myself seen getting a photo of the guy's license plates. He cornered me on my parents' porch where I was cutting drywall, and I thought I could stare him down. He attacked me with a 2x4 and cracked me over the head about 3 times before I was able to get out past him. I ended up talking to the cops sitting on the curb with blood streaming down from my scalp as the paramedics tried to determine if I knew who I was, etc. I did not actually suffer a concussion but I know if I hadn't gotten out of there the next blow could easily have cracked my skull or neck wide open. I am also extremely happy that he did not see the drywall knife I had been using.

It's really changed my outlook on life.

hadjiboy, I spent many years of intermittent major depression. It was tolerable most of the time. There were a few points where I freaked myself out with my own suicidal thoughts, though, and I got on antidepressants until things became manageable again. Some people may think of depression, still, as a moral failing, but I try to recognize it as a killer disease.

What are you looking for?

Too many things to mention right here, but thanks for asking. And I appreciated your comment on Mefi.

dhartung, others, those who've given me advice about the anti-depressants--I think that maybe had something to do with it--my coming out of my depression. Although, God did cross my mind, but you know what: maybe God was saying something to me. To stay on my meds perhaps.

Thanks all the same.