Venting Want to die but scared of eternal nothingness

[yomander369]

My life is unbearable. I want to end the suffering before it's too late for me . But I'm also scared of the eternal blackness that will come with dying. Everything I know and love and understand will disappear forever. There will be no more experience of anything at all. It's an irreversible decision.

I have an undiagnosed and untreated back injury that feels like my muscles have completely torn from my spine and pelvis. It prevents me from walking, standing and sitting. My life is physical agony and torture. While I'm in pain I just want to die as soon as possible. But sometimes I'll wake up terrified of everything ceasing to exist.

Nevertheless I'm doing everything I can to prepare. It's just making the leap feels scary. I will miss the pure existence of stuff, even if it's all painful.

 

[wiggy]

Hey, hope you feel better. What kind of back injury do you have, and what if any exams have you had for it? Was it related to mechanical trauma?
Edit: I'm not simply asking out of politeness - sometimes, mysterious and particularly bad back injuries can be downstream from serious(but surprisingly, very treatable) underlying diseases.

 

[yomander369]

Hey, hope you feel better. What kind of back injury do you have, and what if any exams have you had for it? Was it related to mechanical trauma?

Thanks :)

It's a long story. I basically tore my erector spinea on the right side during an accident. It healed but then got reinjured by a PT. Afterwards it stopped healing and the tendon ripped completely. This had a cascading effect where my pelvic ligaments, glutes and hamstrings started straining over time due to overcompensation and now they are injured as well.

I've been hospitalized twice, I have every part of my body MRI imaged, have EMG. All is unremarkable. But I can barely stand or sit. Lying down is excruciating too. It's like my erectors just tore off my sacrum, but it simply will not show on MRIs which is frustrating.

I've been getting steadily worse for 5 months now, so absolutely no hope for recovery.

 

[wiggy]

That is terrible to hear, and it rules out what I had initially suspected when you mentioned an undiagnosed back injury. I know from experience that these injuries are no joke - I myself have been hospitalized in the past for months due to multiple spinal fractures. The pain was so intense I don't think I can even recall the feeling, the only respite was passing out from it, as painkillers had virtually no effect.

I don't think I have much in the way of practical information to offer you, other than maybe try to read up on pain science if you haven't already. I'm not a medical expert, but what I got from it is that it isn't really such a well understood phenomenon, and there isn't always a neat causal chain of physical factors that can explain it. In my experience, my back pain was completely unbearable until one day it basically wasn't there at all. I know it can seem pretty grim, but don't give up trying to look for different therapies if you can.

Back to the topic of the thread(my apologies for derailing it), the usual retort to this apprehension is that there simply isn't an experience of death, and therefore it cannot be negative. You probably aren't afraid of nothingness when you think back to 100 years ago in history because you didn't exist then, so you shouldn't be any more scared of thinking of a time after you're no longer alive.

 

[yomander369]

That is terrible to hear, and it rules out what I had initially suspected when you mentioned an undiagnosed back injury. I know from experience that these injuries are no joke - I myself have been hospitalized in the past for months due to multiple spinal fractures. The pain was so intense I don't think I can even recall the feeling, the only respite was passing out from it, as painkillers had virtually no effect.

I don't think I have much in the way of practical information to offer you, other than maybe try to read up on pain science if you haven't already. I'm not a medical expert, but what I got from it is that it isn't really such a well understood phenomenon, and there isn't always a neat causal chain of physical factors that can explain it. In my experience, my back pain was completely unbearable until one day it basically wasn't there at all. I know it can seem pretty grim, but don't give up trying to look for different therapies if you can.

Back to the topic of the thread(my apologies for derailing it), the usual retort to this apprehension is that there simply isn't an experience of death, and therefore it cannot be negative. You probably aren't afraid of nothingness when you think back to 100 years ago in history because you didn't exist then, so you shouldn't be any more scared of thinking of a time after you're no longer alive.

Thanks, yeah I try to imagine it will be like falling asleep for one last time. I want it to be peaceful like that. Just the world fading out to a point then disappearing.