I don't think you're meant to be dead and not alive. I think you've been holding yourself apart from some of what it is to be alive. It's not some fate you're consigned to.

[and it's to protect himself, mostly, because pain and grief is also a part of being alive, and from what she's seen, perhaps his is too intense for him to bear. but it's him, not some objective truth.]

The others? Marcoh, Jiaoqiu, Siffrin?