I’m not even sure what I meant by it, you know? The feeling’s still there, but the emotion’s gone. If that makes any sense. Sometimes, it’s like I’m just traversing the between the living and the dead. I’m haunting this place. My life. Those I loved.
There’s this delusion I read about while living. Cotard’s, it’s called. When a person has Cotard Delusion, he believes that he is already dead. Not wanting to die. Not suicidal. Dead. Doorknob-esque. I’m not sure if anyone ever recovers from it, but who’s to say? I’m definitely not. In extreme cases, people with Cotard’s tend to kill themselves. Again, this isn’t suicide. They firmly believe that they are not living, therefore, cannot die again. In other cases, they believe they can “feel” their innards fester, smell their bodies rotting.
My favorite case was about a man who survived a motorcycle accident. He believed that he visited his mother in her dreams every night. That was the only explanation for why she still continued interacting with him. In hopes to free him from his delusion, she took him on a trip to Africa. Through his eyes, however, she joined him on a tour of Hell.
“Or one begins asking oneself that same question differently. Am I dead? Though this question at no time explicitly translates to Should I be dead, eventually the suicide hotline is called. You are, as usual watching television, the eight-o’clock movie, when a number flashes on the screen: 1-800-SUICIDE. You dial the number. Do you feel like killing yourself? the man on the other end of the receiver asks. You tell him, I feel like I am already dead. When he makes no response you add, I am in death’s position. He finally says, Don’t believe what you are thinking and feeling. Then he asks, Where do you live?” – Claudia Rankine, Don’t Let me Be Lonely
There have been times when I wondered if I’m, in fact, non-existent. Not dead. Not even invisible. I begin to have this terrible feeling that I don’t actually exist. And that this is just some dream. A brain in a vat.
The thing about depression is that the more you allow to pile on top, the less you feel anything. And the less you feel, the more you begin to think. There isn’t any fear of not existing anymore than a fear of dying.
Chapin City Blues 