In my youth, from teen to young adult, I looked forward to dying as long as it was painless. My last attempt at suicide at age 21 did not end my desire to go to sleep and never wake up. However, I did choose to accept such feelings while not giving myself permission to act on them because of how it would impact my family.
The last time I considered killing myself was after my sister hung herself at age 43; I was 47 at the time. Fortunately, my close friends did not give me much time to been alone with my thoughts and I eventually accepted her death, that I could not have prevented it and that I bore no responsibility for it.
While I have lived with depression my entire life, I no longer seek death as an escape from the mental pain that ranges from moderate to severe, but never totally disappears. Instead of viewing death as an escape, I now recognize it as a necessary transition from this reality to that from which we were born; I do not believe that after death one joins with others who have departed from life, but if what we call consciousness continues after death, perhaps it may become one with a universal consciousness.
I am a hospice volunteer, helping the dying to have dignity in the last days of their life and helping their family and friends work through the grief that both proceeds and continues after their loved one has departed. In this way, I think that I have come to terms with my inevitable end, though hopefully decades from now.