🚗 Road Rage Trauma
First Draft Created: 2024-03-18 19:20
Last Updated: 1 month, 3 weeks ago
"We'll never make it on time!" Barend whined.
"No." I said, my hands gripping the steering wheel tigher than I'd allow myself if we were even moving. "We won't."
I let that short, terse sentence hang in the air, punctuated by his silence and my unnecessarily emphatic gear shift into first as we slowed to a halt behind the gridlocked traffic.
Normally, I'd find silences awkward.
This time, I felt vindictive, and gratified that his always-gabbing mouth had not formulated a response. I was unusually pissed, something he rarely saw of me. He was always late. He always made us late. I was sick of it.
In the passenger seat he was tense, possibly frozen, as if moving as little as possible.
I had been told I was intimidating when I seethed, although this was not something I did often. Today was meant to be important, the one day we had promised to be on time. We could not risk being late for a wedding.
I was not in the mood for criticism, for lateness, for anything.
His hand meandered slowly down to his left side, discretely, almost sheepishly, and I heard a muffled and almost inaudible click as the seatbelt he had forgotten to attach found its resting place.
I rolled my eyes, after a cursory side-glance. The coward had even been covering the socket of the contact point of the seat belt as he locked it in slowly, as if I would turn on him like an angry bull if he made one more sound.
Then I sighed, feeling some pity for this frustratingly adorkable wretch. It wasn't his fault his boss kept him after hours. Though perhaps if he could be more assertive in the first place, we wouldn't be in this mess...
I stole another glance.
His eyes were glassy, and fimly fixed ahead. His hands weren't even fidgeting, but tightly clasped. Not together, but...
My eyes returned to the road. I inched the car forward another few metres to follow the car in front. Stopped again. Frustrating.
Side glance. His hands were clasped... On his seatbelt I realised. One was, anyway. The other, grasping the side of the door, where an armrest formed a handhold.
Back to the road. A few more inches forward. And then stop. And then go. And then stop.
Another side glance. He was swallowing nervously, eyes fixed on the cars ahead, fingers clenching tighter.
It was clear he did want to say something, and this time my silence was because I wanted to allow him to say it rather than snapping at him. I slackened my shoulders, letting out an audible sigh - that of release, not exasperated passive-aggression - trying to appear more visibly relaxed. With a sigh, I sensed him relax beside me too, mirroring my body language.
My hands relaxed more on the steering wheel, even though we were moving forward by inches, with stops in between.
He was moving now, instead of being frozen to his seat. Shifting and fidgeting, more like his usual self.
"I heard," he said finally "that ... when people are angry when they drive... it's a fascinating thing!" His voice was artificially bright, so, not back to normal then. "Uhm, they are more likely... to have accidents. Even going slowly, in fact dense traffic is one of the ways... There's... there's a study, it's... it's really interesting!"
I suddenly realised what all of this was about. Regret washed over me.
He was afraid.
It should have been obvious.
And right then, it started coming back to me.
I remembered now, back when we had first started dating. A few weeks in, at the sudden news of his long-estranged and homophobic father's death after running a red light, Barry had broken down, with me holding him as he wept.
In his moment of vulnerability, he'd started talking about how his father used to drive, speeding up when angry, slowing down to a crawl, and sometimes even slamming on brakes when he was in a bad temper. He had spoken of how it would terrify his mother, and also him as a young child in the back seat. How they'd begged him to stop doing it.
"I think he did that to punish her... to punish us, when we didn't behave," Barry had sniffled, drying his eyes as he concluded his story.
He had been perched on the end of the bed at my apartment at that point, hugging his knees to himself protectively. I had enveloped him in a large hug, my larger frame making this easy to do, and had opened the great coat I was still wearing from our evening out to wrap him up as much as possible in my embrace, because he'd needed the comfort.
Hugging someone side-on who is hugging their knees is difficult, but we managed, and he'd leaned into me, giggling, flopping over like a puppy as if this were a trust exercise. His knees still clasped, he'd pitched sideways, making me have to drop the sides of the coat and catch him before he could tumble head-first off the bed like some silly, giggling, adorable boulder.
Making him laugh again had been worth the awkwardness, even if he might have ended up thinking this new man in his life was nothing but a goofball.
But this was important.
I'd caught his chin - after catching him first - and tilted it up so that he was looking into my eyes, as we perched, still precariously, on the side of the bed.
That was abuse, I'd told him, seriously, looking into his beautiful blue eyes, their lashes still wet. I released his chin to carefully wipe both of them dry with the corner of my sleeve.
"I know." He said, softly.
He did know. But he'd been grateful for the comfort, and the validation. Our relationship over the past seven years had only grown since then, and I'd been glad to have been a rock for him to lean on.
Although his father had been largely absent from Barend's life even at that point, I remembered how I had hated the man for that, and later for other things too, when Barend had finally opened up about the depths of his father's abuse towards him and his mother.
My idiot brain in present day had not made the connection to this story back when we'd first started our relationship, and now I realised where Barend's fear all was coming from.
I also remembered something a close friend had told me. When you weaponize anger to silence or intimidate another person, that's abuse.
God damn it.
I had some serious introspecting to do. I hadn't meant... I mean... maybe I had... but...
Jimmy I told myself. You've got to get real with yourself. Deal yourself. This isn't cool. And it's not fair to Barend, *especially with what he's been through. But most of all, it's not cool.*
My own father had been the type to weaponize passive aggression. I'd never made the connection that he might be like Barend's. He was nowhere near as bad, but...
I remembered how I used to fear him getting angry.
No. This wasn't how people were supposed to be towards each other. Things had to change. I couldn't let myself be the kind of person who got angry and made other people feel it. I could never let myself make others feel sub-human, or think of other people in a sub-human way.
Our relationship had been mostly healthy, but still. I needed to get to the bottom of my anger. Take responsibility, and stop evading.
Things had cleared up on the road ahead. We were going to make it, though somehow, even being on time to make it to a wedding didn't seem anywhere near as important as what was going on right now.
"I'm... I'm sorry." I said.
His hand reached to rest on top of mine on the gear stick, where it'd moved in anticipation of traffic finally speeding up, and he squeezed it lightly before releasing it so I could drive.
"I know." He said. "Jimmy? Babe?"
"Yes?" I replied.
"You'd never drive ... deliberately fast or slow ... to punish me, right?"
"No," I said. "Never."
I paused. I was still processing. Finally, I spoke again.
"I'm going to go to a therapist, babe. And... you can talk to me about anything, you know. Even if I'm angry. And next time, you can tell me. Please tell me, if I ever do something to scare you again."
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