123 - death and similar delusions

about 6 years ago and for about 6 months, i experienced the stress-induced delusion that i was already dead. i believed for a time that the world just hadn't caught up yet, hadn't realised the facts of my mortality. i'd slipped through the gaps of the moment i was meant to be torn into a million pieces. and thus i was a little bit invincible. those six months were paradoxically some of the most reckless and the most cautious of my entire life. i was consumed by the leftover fear of a moment that almost happened. i had panic attacks getting into cars. my claustrophobia became a thousand times worse. i developed little stress tics and paranoias. but... i was already dead, wasn't i? these were just the compulsions of a body fooling itself with an imitation of life. i stopped caring about a lot of things. social norms, expectations, relationships, dreams and ideals. a lot of them had only ever existed in my head in the first place of course, but nevertheless there was a ritual to leaving…