That's it, exactly. It's impossible to comprehend not-being. Not so much a fear of death (although I've never been one to slow down for - or actually stop my car so that I could amble over to see - a traffic accident) but what I called, at 12 or 13, "the mirror effect." I would look into my bathroom mirror and stare directly into my reflected eyes and wonder how I could possibly not be.

Since my battle with being started early, ceased for about 12-13 years, began again at my dad's death and hasn't let up since, I can't confirm your therapist's comment. There were one, maybe two, years where I wasn't overwhelmingly depressed at the unspeakable thought of ceasing to exist but even when I was married and had a child, I wouldn't say that took me far away from my fear – maybe I just had less time to think? I don't know.

My grandfather owned a funeral home in a very small Texas town (large enough to be the county seat, though) and I spent my summers from 6 y.o to 12 y.o. with my grandparents. That meant at least 4 hours per day at the funeral home. So I would say that I'm very comfortable with the 'physical' side of death. And when I was in high school my course load kept getting more and more involved with theology and philosophy (I attended a high school seminary) and, in one way or another, both subjects had a lot to say about death.

So I would say that for the first 17 years of my life I couldn't help but think about death. When you're watching a body that's been cut to pieces having the blood drained out, it's difficult to think of daisies sprouting from the chest cavity. I've never been able to just flip a switch from morose to happy by thinking happy thoughts. Some people seem to be able to do so with little effort, and that baffles me. Something that I don't 'get'. I've had people tell me that I "must let go" and others tell me that I "must put all (my) energy into" achieving that sort of engaging and delightful thinking, or lack of thinking.

Three, four or maybe five times, I've been told that I've 3-6 or 6-12 months to live. I just had a note pop up on my Apple Watch and it seems that exactly 13 years ago I did something to ease my (then) surely imminent death. My last drawn-out period had to have passed 3-4 days ago?

I have a therapist appt and have to go out for my van. I'm always scared to go outside, and much more so riding the van on the highway. I'll come back after my appt.