I have felt like this twice before. Once was when I was homeless, trying to sleep under a bridge in the rain. The other time was when She was in the hospital dying and I was sitting in that cold, white, sterile waiting room, drinking tasteless water out of those tiny paper cups because there was nothing else to do but lose my mind.
In each case I felt a coldness that had nothing to do with temperature. It was as if my soul had detached from my body and, without the superficial covering of flesh, it felt how exposed and fragile it is in the open air. I’m sure this is what death is like.
It’s funny, sometimes I can understand how humans cling so tightly to life, calling it the most precious thing, dedicating their entire existence to its preservation. But I guess when your entire life becomes cold, there’s really no reason to hold on to it. Am I afraid of death? You bet your ass. Am I afraid of feeling an eternity of this coldness? Yes. But then again, the potential reward, nonexistence, is so very tempting. And I’ve always been a gambling man.
10 comments
Your story brings a quote by Clevername to mind…”Life can be both precious and worthless at the same time” …I don’t know why but that resonated with me so much. As for me and death I’m not so much afraid of being dead….Its the dying part that scares me….The seconds it takes to die seem to be the most terrifying…….”But then again, the potential reward, nonexistence, is so very tempting”…yes it really is.
Those few seconds are definitely the big turn off to the whole suicide thing. Someone, I think on this site, once suggested the terrifying thought: as you die, your body & brain slow down, making time feel like it’s much slower. So in theory those last few seconds could feel like hours, days, or even an eternity?
I have certainly alluded to that possibility, more than once.
That’s the part that bothers me most. Perception of time can skew quite a bit while in distress. I can’t stand the thought of spending 5-15 eternal minutes in utter terror and panic. Or, suddenly regaining consciousness because my body managed to eke out another bit of oxygen, bringing me back to the harsh reality that my body is half “asleep,” my head is “exploding,” and i can’t breathe, or even control my limbs, to attempt self-rescue. How many times will i imagine my own death, as it occurs? How many thoughts will race through my mind? How many /nightmares/ will manifest in that confused, dream-like state between life and death? Idk if you’ve ever… been there, but vision is one of the first things to go, when brain pressure is out of spec… when you’re choking or stood up too fast, or your pressure suddenly drops for whatever reason.
I don’t think the brain slows, i think adrenaline accelerates its function, thereby skewing the perception of time to seem like it’s passing more slowly. It is processing more information per unit of time, not less. It’s like a shot of NO2 in a car engine. I bet if you push yourself to that “mode” often enough and recklessly enough, you can “burn out” and damage your cognitive faculties.
I figure the only way to combat those factors is to be as fully prepared and resolved as possible, prior. We have to fully and accurately anticipate the reality of the experience, or it’s going to be traumatic and shocking. Trauma and shock are not what i want filling my final moments. If only i could just… lie down and fade away… i would surely have disappeared by now.
I think i know that “supernatural coldness” feeling you described. But i’m convinced it’s a physical, perceptual thing. Not much more than an illusion. I would imagine having no sensation of temperature to be very similar to having the “perfect temperature.” Not too hot, not too cold. Not too anything. Just right. But that “coldness” feeling does tend to combine with the sense of weightless fragility.
I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced “sleep paralysis” but I think that may be what it is like…Its a condition where your brain is awake and you are aware but you can’t move or open your eyes. I actually thought I was dead a few times wile experiencing this. If that is the case and time becomes skewed then I guess I must prepare for that. I also wonder if your life truly “flashes before your eyes” as they say. If so, I would hope to die seeing all the past good moments and then fade into oblivion
Clevername, yes I remember it was you who gave me the idea of time being skewed at the moment of death. And you’re right, in order to perceive time becoming slow, it would mean that our brains speed up.
There’s an Australian movie called “Noise” I think you’d like. Here’s the trailer:
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1862834713/?ref_=tt_ov_vi
The idea is like you said, the last 10 seconds of your life is your “eternity” and that determines heaven or hell for you.
If that’s so (and it seems entirely possible), then the method and act of suicide is extremely important. It’s not just as simple as dying, but you really have to do it as peacefully as possible. I don’t know if that’s possible.
With me, I’ll probably just keep reminding myself that my pains are over. That thought itself is very calming. Whether it becomes my eternity or whether it’s just the last thing I feel on this earth, I hope I get it.
PNL, I know that feeling of sleep paralysis you mentioned. Funny thing is, the few times it has happened I felt a powerful surge to fight death and live. It’s been years so I don’t know if that instinct for survival is still in me, but I tell you it wasn’t a pleasant experience. It would suck indeed to feel an “eternity” of that.
Yes it is terrifying. I don’t know though when you see the dead they are peaceful as can be. I would like to think death is like how it was before we came into this world. Nothingness….I guess that’s what scares so many people is the nothingness. The absence of thought and perception. I don’t see it that way though….I think of it as a realm of peace where you can never be disturbed.
That film looks a little interesting. Perhaps i will attempt to view it.
OTOH, i’ve often wondered if the last several years of my life have been like “Sixth Sense,” and i’m actually already dead, but don’t realize it. You would think that simply considering that possibility would reveal the truth in such a situation… so i’m probably still here. But it begs the question: will we even know whether we’ve crossed the line into that “eternity?” How long will it feel like it lasts? How many dreams can occur in 10 minutes? Will i be lucid? Will i be an observer in another pseudo-reality?
I would imagine it would be quite similar to a dream-state, and i’ve had dreams that felt and seemed quite real, until the moment i realized i was dreaming. I can only imagine that a “death-dream” would be even more intense, and might seem as real as reality itself.
I could imagine being involuntarily bombarded with all the same feelings that lead me to wish for my own ending: primarily the “wishing things were different” part. I might end up having both real and fabricated “memories” of all the stuff i really cared about… which would probably be quite unpleasant for me, considering my circumstances. At first, i would want to reject that possibility, as that’s not how i want to spend my final moments of consciousness. OTOH, such things would surely serve to remind me why i made the decision… which i suppose would help comfort me.
Either way, i’m pretty sure that death is quite an unpleasant experience. Even with that notion, i still find myself thinking “at least it will be over.” It’s like that one final thrust to “finish strong.” That one last lunge to finish the job. The idea is to spend all you can, “leave it all on the field” so to speak, and with your last burst pulled from the depths of your emergency energy reserves, burn it all, so that you know you gave it all you could, and the result could not have been any better than it was… and collapse from exhaustion, one step past the finish line.
I would guess that the “death dream” would be filled with regret, if you realized, too late, that there was more you could have done… but you’re lying there dying, wishing you had, unable to return to complete what’s left undone.
Ideally, i would like to figure out all that and make peace with it, before my time comes.
Being dead on the inside is just as bad as being dead on the outside. Only difference is that you have to wake up the next day and do it all again
You said it, nullus. As unpleasant as death may be, at least it only happens once.
CN, those are some deep and frightening thoughts about the final “death dream”. You’re right, we’ve all experienced dreams that seem like they last for hours when in reality you’ve only dozed for 10 minutes between snooze alarms.
Perception is a weird thing. It can make a reality of anything it chooses. The one thing I’ve got going for me is I rarely have nightmares. Not counting half-awake daydreams (those always suck because I just replay the normal terrible thoughts of my waking state), when I do sink into a real sleep, my dreams are either emotionless or somewhat enjoyable.
That’s what makes waking up so horrifying. Every god damned day, waking from a peaceful sleep into the worst hell you can imagine.
So I dunno, if at the point of death my mind fully accepts that I’m leaving and never coming back, I think it would be a relatively liberating feeling. I do agree that life ends with a bang, like a star erupting into a red giant at the end of its life, burning out the last of its reserves. For anyone who’s fully conscious when that happens, I’m sure it’s no fun.
I once took a few too many sleeping pills (not a suicide attempt, more like “let’s see what this does”), and the feeling was just like you said. I felt an unnatural surge of strength & panic. The way a runner would feel at the end of a race that he’s losing by a nose. That was years ago, and it had enough of an impact that I quit experimenting with sleeping pills.
I was still young then, and I still had a lot of things I had to do. Nowadays I’ve either done everything or failed trying. Maybe it’s time for another sleeping pill experiment to see if I really have the will to die.
About living The Sixth Sense. Haha that could very well be. Maybe not literally, but I often feel like our destinies are mapped out, and if you happen to circumvent your destiny (death), you’ll basically be an empty shell until death comes around for you again. I never saw the Final Destination movies, but aren’t they something along the lines of cheating death, but death just comes after you even stronger?
Haha I would be a really boring Final Destination candidate. It would be too easy to kill me.