Angry

I am a very angry driver. When someone does something that breaks the rules of the road, especially when it impacts me, I get mad. If someone cuts me off, if someone doesn’t use their turn indicator, if someone drives too slowly I yell at them. Not crazy, lose my head, see red behind my eyes kind of yelling. But definitely the raised voice, a few expletives for good measure kind of yelling.

But the anger that I feel at the drivers who are doing things wrong (and by “doing things wrong” I really mean “doing things that inconvenience me”) isn’t really because of the drivers. Or at least the root of that anger has nothing to do with people’s driving habits.

What I’m really angry about is cancer. What I’m really angry about is chronic pain. What I’m really angry about is the way my parents have been pretty much screwed by diseases and injuries and syndromes that I can’t do anything about. I couldn’t stop my dad’s back from rupturing discs all over the place. I can’t stop my dad from living in pain. I couldn’t stop my mom from getting breast cancer when I was a kid. I definitely couldn’t stop her from getting brain cancer, or stop it from progressing.

In all these things that have majorly shaped my life, I’ve had no control. In all these situations we lived at the whim of the cancer, of the slipped disc, of the damaged nerve. No matter how much I yell and scream at cancer and back injuries, I can’t make things different. My pleas and my expletives fall on deaf… ears? Mutated cells? Weakened cartilage? Crushed nerves? (Notice that all the things I’m yelling at can’t actually hear me.) I can’t even yell at God, because I know God didn’t cause any of this to happen.

So my anger, my pent up rage at all this shit that’s been thrown at my family, lands on unknowing drivers (and sometimes friends, family, and coworkers, for which I am very sorry, and for whom I’m trying to change). Because maybe if I yell loud enough they’ll hear me, and then I can actually effect change.