Am I dead or just aware?

I had a very strange moment yesterday...

I was very tired, in that partially asleep, spacey zone. In this state, I suddenly realized that I might be dead.

It might seem silly now, but it felt entirely plausible at the time. I was honestly considering the possibility that everything around me was created in my own mind, and I was just waiting for something or someone to make me remember that I was dead. I honestly could not tell if I was still alive.

So in that moment, I was neither. I wasn't alive and I wasn't dead. I was forced to accept my existence, in whatever form it was in. I decided that if I was alive, I could handle it. I decided that if I was dead, I could also handle it. It was very much like being in that meditative void.

I started paying attention to everything that was going on in the background. Where I was, who was around me, what conversations strangers were having in my hearing range.. thinking, "If I am dead and I created this reality, these places and these strangers and their conversations must have meaning to me somehow." So I picked out pieces of personal meaning in everything around me.. things that would usually seem completely unrelated to my existence. And actually.. it worked! I was able to delve into myself on levels I had neglected and shed some new light on those levels.

Maybe I've been watching too much LOST, but it really altered my perspective on things. In a way, we're all dead, wandering our own created realities, waiting to remember WHO WE ARE.

We have created so much of our worlds, but then we don't even pay attention to what we've built! There are pieces of us in everything around us. It's strange how we can become so unaware...

Am I dead or just aware?