"To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror; to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror."

When I was in my late teens, life threw me a lot of curveballs within a couple years, and it left me feeling more than a little depressed and suicidal. What got me through that was the realisation that if I ever felt just completely, totally overwhelmed, if everything completely fell apart, and there was no way back... I could always just kill myself. Utter oblivion being an option that I could always take was extremely comforting, because it meant that I was never truly trapped or stuck in any bad situation. It allowed me to take chances that I might not otherwise have taken, which took my life from bearable to pretty good over the course of many years.

Changing things for the better and getting out of depression was not an easy or quick thing to do, but the whole time, I had Death by my side, not as a threat, but as a friend, someone who said "It's alright, if all else fails, I'm here for you", and it allowed me to make it through the worst times. Ever since then, I have had a very hard time understanding why anyone would fear the idea of death as nothingness. To me, it has been a source of comfort and reassurance.