Not being dead
I’m finding it quite hard to cope with not being dead.
First, there is this awful dissonance between normal, mindless being alive and abnormal mindful being alive. Normally, a person stumbles around inside life. Maybe, like me, you think a lot about what is going within life: politically, romantically, anthropologically, morally, physically. Or, maybe, like I wish I did, you live without analysing. Regardless, it is very rare to look up and go, “Good Lord, I am alive”, because that almost necessitates trying to use that incredibleness to make you use every second.
The problem is that, because I died, I am having a high number of those, “Good Lord, I am alive”, moments. So, I rapidly switch between getting on with things and stepping outside life to see that it exists.
Second, I cannot fathom the relationship between other people and the fact that I died. I know they were all terribly upset when I was in hospital. In that time, I realised a lot of people cared very much about me. However, now that I am back in real life – out of hospital, walking around, not very ill, back in London – I don’t know how they feel about it. I sometimes worry that they’ve forgotten that I was dead. I wonder why they don’t hug me like it’ll be the last time, or why they don’t focus on me. I wonder why Matte had spare care to pursue another relationship when she almost lost me. I do know how terrible this sounds.