Why do the near-misses still sit in me when it feels normal now?

You walk the beam, climb the scaffold, stand where a fall would end you — and you call it Tuesday. That is not calm. That is a habit that has swallowed your fear whole, and a habit is not the same as readiness. But you remember the ones who slipped. The tool that fell past your ear. The harness that caught a half-second late. You carry these alone, because the crew moves on, and so do you — at least on the surface. Here is the honest problem: what you carry and what you say out loud are two different things. That gap does not close by itself. It widens, quietly, until something breaks in you that has nothing to do with height.