How would you want to go and when?

I think i’d like to have one last great day, and then at the end of it, knowing this will be my last ever great day, i’d like to just lie down, relax, and fade to black.

I would like to go in either the fastest, or the least painful way. I have already been subjected to far more than what i feel is “my fair share” of pain and torment. I’ve already spent my whole life patiently waiting for things to never happen, or for things to stop being the ways i abhor. In the end, i want it to be different. I want it to just happen and quickly be over with, like a band-aid… or i want it to be surprisingly painless. I want it to be the one thing that ever didn’t take too long or hurt too much. I think it would be great if my last thought was: “Hm… that wasn’t so bad.”

But it will probably end up being just like everything else: not the way i want it, not by my schedule, too painful and drawn out.

As an atheist (anti-theist) who struggles to even ponder “spirituality,” i probably wouldn’t mind if my body just stopped functioning, and my consciousness somehow carried on, but without the physical requirements of a body. If i could still be “me,” but purely in an energy-form, without being attached to any matter… that would be fine. I think it would be pretty cool to “ascend” to some sort of “higher plane” of existence, where i could still be a self-aware, conscious entity, but without all the complications of mortality. If i could somehow achieve that transcendence, and my physical body’s particles could just disintegrate and disperse… that would be ideal.

But i’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way, and that death is always painful no matter what, unless you’re somehow unable to experience pain in those final moments, whether through drugs or unconsciousness, or whatever.

I think most deaths consist of a combination of extreme nerve and muscle pain, tingly numbness, suffocation, and profound disorientation. There’s probably more to it, but i’m fairly certain it’s almost never pleasant, even if it seems that way externally.