The Invisible Tornado

One of the things i have always had was hyper-vigilance. if you grow up in a situation where a shoe can go through a wall at the drop of a hat, people peel out in cars regularly, and an outdoor voice is the only one spoken behind closed doors, you will be a very anxious kid who rigs their bedroom door with a trip wire, sleeps during the day when its safer and does school work at night, always has a go bag ready, and knows how to run fast. I was always hyper vigilant and ready to react to anything. I was ready to manage any situation that came up. I was ever in an anxious state of waiting…just here waiting on disaster and destruction so that i could ride the wave. Have you ever stood up on a surfboard in calm waters and then tried to stay there in that position with your knees slightly bent waiting for the monster wave that might arrive during storm season in three months? Firstly you’d be very hungry and dehydrated by the time it arrived and secondly you’d be exhausted from constantly holding that position, poised for a wave. Your eyeballs would hurt from scanning the horizon for signs of a storm. My point is, hyper-vigilance is a skill that is useful but also exhausting. My stress hormones are so high that ive dealt with adrenal gland failure and hair loss for most of my life. Im struggling with whether hyper-vigilance is something i would like to keep. If it is, i must deal with the pain of rheumatoid arthritis in every joint. If it isn’t, i must accept i may not see every little thing coming around the corner towards me and if i do see it, i may not react very quickly.

I am taking full complex cbd. It allows me to function while riddled with rheumatoid arthritis and keep from dislocating any new joints. It allows me to walk without my walking stick. It also means i have to be aware of affects on short term memory and write things down. There is one other side effect; a massive decrease in anxiety. I don’t worry about things, which on its head sounds wonderful, but im not sure where i stand on this issue at the moment. During one of the recent pop up storms created out of the massive heat of a Texas afternoon the sky looked quite a bit hazy and just set for action. All the clouds were veiled by this layer of haze that i knew to be water particles kind of hanging out unincorporated, evaporating but not collected yet into something impressive. There was a lot of this haze just hanging in the air and i realized massive weather was poised for creation. I was driving in to town for a mandatory meeting at work. I was on highway 27, a long flat skinny stretch of road, when i noticed three pieces of trash whip quickly across the road. There was a gas station drink cup, an adjacent lid and straw, and i don’t remember what the third piece of trash was. I watched it all whip to the side and then suddenly back in the opposite direction. I thought to myself, “well that seems like a strong gust of wind. Oh, wind must have changed. Blowing in the other direction now. With two directions of wind clashing this ought to be a big storm.” I was kind of sad i was going to miss it, driving into town and all. Then before my eyes the three pieces of trash lifted off the ground and went in a diagonal circular motion in the opposite direction and around as if they were in an invisible funnel. By the time i realized what i was looking at was the birth of a tornado i was driving into it. I remember thinking, “that looks like its going around in a circle. That’s what i’d expect trash to do were it picked up by a tornado, but i don’t see a tornado…”. I strained my eyes to see some kind of gray or brown twister carrying the trash up towards the sky but i saw nothing. All i could see was the trash. I glanced in my rear view mirror and noted all the cars behind me slamming on their breaks on highway 27 and either pulling off to the side or throwing it in reverse. I thought, “oh, they see it too…it must be a tornado!” That is the moment at which the front left side of my suv hit whatever wind funnel had picked up these three pieces of trash seconds earlier. I heard wind hitting the window of the car and it sounded like i had made contact with something with my car even though nothing visible was there. I held onto the steering wheel as my car was jerked violently to the left and started making the turn that the trash had, round in a circular motion. I thought, “oh, i guess im in a tornado now…well, it seems just to be the left edge of the car being effected, maybe we can steer out of it…”. This was not effective as that wheel was no longer on the ground so steering was not really getting me anywhere. Then i thought, “well it seems to be a baby one i mean otherwise i’d already be dead or tossed somewhere right? Let’s just wait and see how this goes.” The tornado moved on behind me…the car was no longer sucked in by its wind and i was able to get back in the correct lane of traffic and continue driving on towards town. I should note that all this happened in a matter of seconds. My point is, there was no moment at which i said “oh **** that might be something ominous that i have to avoid…get ready!” There were no evasion tactics, and afterwards i actually forgot it happened and attended our mandatory work meeting and only remembered the incident three days later when i mentioned to my mother that there might actually after-all be a side effect of full complex cbd that i wasnt sure about…decreased anxiety. Could i still take care of everything with less hyper vigilance? Well, if everything was avoiding tornados…probably not. But how often would i really need to avoid tornados? Did i want to live with chronic joint pain and inflammation that would cause deformity? I needed to be able to walk…it seemed like a no brainer…but i was pretty ashamed that i, the kid with the go bag ready all the time…sleeping during the day and doing school at night so that i could never have my soft under belly exposed to predatory animals…had not seen a tornado forming before my eyes. My anxiety ridden self should have been all over that ****. Instead i was just like, “oh we’re rotating now….cool, cool. We’ll probably be able to drive again in a few seconds though.” So, im in a season of change where i’m still trying to figure out what im going to do about my joints long term. Obviously i need my mind sharp to run a homestead but at the same time i need to be able to walk to run a homestead…i suspect that the answer lies somewhere in between no cbd and the amount of cbd that rids me of pain…probably i will land on the conclusion that i need to take the edge off pain rather than eliminate it in the interest of being able to see invisible tornados coming on the 27.