There’s something deep inside you that shifts—awakens, I guess—when, at one point in your life, you come face-to-face with death and narrowly escape it. From that moment on, it’s like an unacknowledged insight is plugged into your mind. It doesn’t ring like an alarm when it picks up on something that’s off. It doesn’t always make your heart pound. Sometimes, there isn’t the time for that. Call it instinct or intuition or whatever word you have for self-preservation, but once it’s there, it never goes away. And when it stirs, you feel it like a layer of static on your skin.
