My mental sensation of no longer being a person had a correlating physical symptom: my eyes no longer seemed like lenses onto the world. They seemed, rather, to be distinct parts of my body, as perceptible as fingers—oddly distant, protuberant, like old-fashioned spectacles. My face was a mask I was conscious of at all times. It made me feel categorically fraudulent. I could feel the fat in my cheeks and the weight of my bones as I spoke. I experienced a mounting anxiety: everything was wrong, and that wrongness was inside me, but I wasn’t sure anymore who that “me” was, or how to express what
...more
