The despairer cannot die; no more than "the dagger can kill your thoughts" can despair consume the eternal, the self that is the source of despair, whose worm dieth not and whose fire is not quenched. Yet despair is exactly a consumption of the self, but an impotent self-consumption not capable of doing what it wants. But what it wants is to consume itself, which it cannot do, and this impotence is a new form of self-consumption, but in which despair is once again incapable of doing what it wants, to consume itself.
"When death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life. But when one learns to know the even more horrifying danger, one hopes for death. When the danger is so great that death has become the hope, the despair is the hopelessness of not even being able to die."