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“Clairvoyant” isn’t a word I would select, for that which is perceive is not a feeling or a sense that stems from reading tea leaves, holding runes, or examining palms.

Mine came with the package. It’s an instinct.

The word I’ve always used is “premonition”.

There are some that would call it a “sixth sense”; that which reaches far beyond touch, sight, hearing, tasting, and smelling. This state of being is intangible, cannot be learned or shared, and is virtually impossible to explain.

The first instance in my life I can recall being aware of my ability to “feel” something coming, my gift for perceiving an event or a person, was when I was eight years old…or there ’bouts.

I went to bed, fell asleep, and had a dream about an elderly relative dying. I saw them lying in the casket as though I was wide awake. The next morning, I awoke to instructions to pack.

Because we had to travel to a funeral.

I’m not entirely sure what I thought about that at such a young age, but with the burden of hindsight, it’s apparent that I was born with it. And it will leave this world with me.

I’ve always been aware of something about me that I couldn’t quite encapsulate, and certainly under no circumstances to anyone else. Hell, even now as a grown adult, I couldn’t begin to put this all into discernible thoughts…at least not without someone locking me up in my own straight jacket or conducting cruel and invasive experiments on me.

On occasion, I chalk up this heightened sense of awareness – of people, places, and intuition – to the constant watch I commanded as a single mother very early in my life. Raising a child on my own required a constant and astute vigilance of everything and everyone that occupied my space.

At other times, I am convinced that this state of being is inherited, having witnessed it in older and wiser relatives that I spent time with when I was young. Even then, their presence was like an electricity that alerted me to something, though I was never able to pinpoint what was that “something”.

This sage capability seems to be woven into each and every aspect of my existence from selecting items in a grocery store to an impulse that I can physically receive from simply shaking another’s hand.

I know. I can tell. I can predict…which direction a relationship will take, what ultimate conclusion will come to people’s actions, and whether I can sustain long or short stints in a public place.

It is weird – it’s like having a crystal ball in front of me, one to look into to predict a current or very-near place or result. But the picture is fuzzy and on rare occasion, can trigger a skewed perception…at least on the face of it.

That direction I may have initially anticipated as an instruction turns out to be indeed a message, but only one that should have been heeded as a warning to run in the opposite direction.

So call it what you will – the heebie jeebies, warm fuzzies, extrasensory perception, or just plain ol’ awareness. It always ends up with me lamenting the exact same thought:

“Dammit, I hate being right all the time.”