Recently, I heard that another childhood acquaintance, who we called “Professor”, died from a gunshot wound.  When my mom told me, I felt this wave of feelings pass through me and for a brief moment I felt like I might be next.  It was a familiar feeling that I had grown up with—the persistent consciousness that everyday could be my last.  For a long time I prized that sense of impending death because I had found that living with the expectancy of death was a good way for me to overcome any threats people put toward me.  “You can only kill me once”, I thought. “And since I am not afraid of death, anything else you try to say or do to threaten me is meaningless to me.”  It was my super-power that served me well in my different neighborhoods and other areas of life, where for years I attracted…