Funny how we are or aren't affected by certain traumas. Having your fingers being broken by your parents or getting chased out of the house at 14 by your shotgun-wielding mother and subsequently being homeless and forcing you to scramble to stay alive? Apparently, less traumatizing than tornadoes.
I failed biology once, it was the only class I've ever gotten a failing grade in. I still get nightmares about "OH NO, I WON'T BE ABLE TO GRADUATE!" or "OH NO, I HAVEN'T BEEN TAKING BIOLOGY CLASSES" and stuff like that.
There have been far more traumatizing things happen to me than my many broken bones and being homeless. I actually had worse things happen to me before it even came to that though but mentally, I separated my family life/ home life with my school life and don't mentally associate them as being the same thing. Pretty much how I keep business and pleasure separated even now. I see high school as being the time I spent with my friends, classmates and school events and my family as being separated mentally, likely because it was so different for me, like night and day tbh. I also see work as being separate from either of those.
Besides, after I regained my footing, I was living among friends and then had my own apartment and felt free for the first time in my life. I always had plenty of friends in school. I was in cheerleading and gymnastics on my student council.. fun times.
The thing I am most afraid of IS tornadoes. I have survived so many in this area. I have seen a car flying in the air before the tornado crossed the street in front of me while I was driving down the road and then watched it proceed to tear up houses and hit a school. When it hit the school, it upset me so bad I actually threw up before I could react. Luckily all the children were safe, but it was terrifying watching the roof go flying.
On my birthday when I was a kid, we had the sheriff drive by our home yelling through his bullhorn that there was tornados on the ground headed our way and to take cover. We were outside playing with our gymnastics ribbon wands and we had not yet even cut the cake. My Dad had made everyone get under the staircase to take cover, but it was my birthday so I came back out anyways and was standing behind him when we both saw them coming over the hill across from our farm. It was one big one throwing up debris and two skinny tornado trailers on each side. It was like something out of a horror movie and didn't seem like it could be real. My Dad heard me gasp when I saw them and that was when he realized I was standing there and screamed at me to get under the stairs so I ran into the house and grabbed my uncut birthday cake ( because that is what a stupid kid does when a tornado hits on their birthday) and I held it the entire time we were taking cover. My dad came running in few minutes later and he said it's here, everyone hold on tight. He held on to the door trying to give it more support in hopes it wouldn't come off it's hinges. You could feel the pressure like it was coming through the very foundation of the house. It was the loudest sound I have ever heard, even louder than when standing next to a train going by. We heard the crashing and glass and the door shaking that my dad was holding on to. My little sister was crying. There was no light in there so we were in the dark. Someone or more likely "more someone's" put their elbow/ hand or something in my cake I was holding during the whole ordeal. We were extremely lucky. It actually didn't hit our house directly. It picked up the barn across the street and threw it at our house though. Par of the barn was in our front living room, there was a 2x4 sticking out of the wall. the front living room windows were broken, more of the barn on the roof of our house and throughout the yard. It also destroyed a barn behind our house. It looked like the Tornado hit the barn across the street, jumped back up in the air and came back down behind our house and took out the neighbors Barn. At the time we were worried he was dead in there because he would get drunk down at the dock across from the barn while fishing all the time and pass out in his barn so when his truck was parked at the barn we knew we could find him in the barn instead of the house. Luckily though he wasn't in the barn. He DID get drunk while fishing BUT chose to walk back to the house because he lost his keys while drunk and couldn't drive his truck back that day. The worst part about that was he slept through the whole thing in his house and didn't answer the door when the sheriff came knocking so they had search parties out looking for him in the fields among the debris while he was just sleeping off his hangover at the time. Then there were like 7 tornados hit after going near my parents farm on Mother's day one year and my friend was in the burger king at the time when it was destroyed. Luckily the customers and workers all took cover in their walk in cooler, and that was the only thing left standing. When I saw her walking around in the street on the news footage from the helicopter going over them, I was so relieved she made it okay. There have been others where I had to take cover repeatedly, but those were the worst. I likely will never stop having nightmares about them.
Oh Biology.. that was the class where the guy next to me always tried to put his hands up my skirt and on my knee in class and creepily say, " Bubbles, bubbles you're in trouble" for some strange reason and I have no clue to this day WTH was wrong with him. He was the only one who has ever called me bubbles and I still have no idea what that was even supposed to mean, so it was exceptionally weird. He also used to leave me little origami folded notes and flowers on my chair. It was even weirder later when his Dad turned out to be my oral surgeon and then gave me a huge discount on my surgery because apparently he had told his dad in high school that he had a huge crush on me and his dad, my then oral surgeon, said he recognized me. I don't think it is possible to express enough just how creepy it is to know that the guy who is about to knock you out and operate on your mouth telling you that he recognizes you from his son having a crush on you. I never actually asked HOW he recognized me, did his son have my photos on his wall? Did he go to the football games when I was cheering? To this day I do not know and it will just have to remain one of those unsolved mysteries that I am never going to bother finding out the answer to because it would make it even weirder for me to try and find out now. I don't think I want to know the answer to that.
As far as my grades went, I always had exceptional grades, that part came easy to me.
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