Kimberlee K.

I’ll be the first to admit I have road rage.

I can’t help it.

I mean, I could, but then where would I put my anger?

I was raised in Southern California, raised a Southern California driver, I need at least a little bit of rage in me to survive out here.

Everyone is in a hurry, everyone is late, everyone thinks they are more important than everyone else, everyone is going to honk, everyone is going to cut you off, and no one is going to use their blinker.

There are very few places as passive aggressive as Southern California freeways.

You want to see someone spitting angry because someone stopped too quickly three miles ago?

You want to see someone gesturing wildly in a manner that suggests a specific person should know what they’re talking about, but the bumper-to-bumper traffic makes it vague and unclear?

You want to find as many people gripping the wheel nervously with both hands as people hanging out the windows with their middle fingers up?

You want to work through a childhood wound you didn’t know was still there in an undetectable, roundabout way in the comfort of your own car?

Come drive in Southern California.

We’re all yelling at each other and shaking our heads, hustling towards our destination so we can immediately slam our door and tell the first person we see about how crazy all the other drivers are.

We’re all jamming to our music before angrily screaming at our neighbor, and then sitting silently in the driver’s seat, replaying the incident over and over again until we’re convinced we were right, and then restarting the song.

Some of us are even singing Christian songs and then saying the meanest things we can think of before slipping back into the chorus with an “oops, sorry.”

Road rage is an art, it is therapy, it is entirely unnecessary, yes, but also no because that guy needs to KNOW that the way he is driving is dangerous, or that I was here FIRST, or that your blinkers are there for a reason, idiot!!

Arguments I never got the last word in are redeemed on the 405 when I don’t let a stranger merge into an exit lane he tried to skip the line on.

Past rejections are healed when I purposefully speed up and slow down, trapping a driver who’s been swerving back and forth between lanes behind a semi-truck that is not even going the speed limit.

The meekness I feel in day-to-day interactions is overshadowed when I can lay on my horn, letting another driver know, with full confidence, that, “I have the right of way, a*shole!”

I am a different person when I drive, and I like her—in spurts.

She keeps me balanced, paves the way for the generally calm, kind person I am otherwise.

If writing lets me channel my emotions, my views on the world, my deepest desires and hopes for the future, driving lets me spit the fire out of my chest that occasionally builds up.

It’s nothing personal. As a driver, I’m simply always going to believe I’m right, and I’m regularly going to call slow drivers, drivers who can’t predict exactly when I want to merge, pedestrians crossing the street when I want to turn left, and parked cars reversing when I was about to sneak into a spot, “RUINERS.”

Because it feels good. And it lets me then get out of the car with a deep breath and an overall consistent smile that is only genuine because of the anger no longer inside me.

I have tried kickboxing, it’s great.

I have spent many years running, it’s freeing.

I love dancing, it makes me feel happy.

But road rage is unlike anything else.

It’s honest and loud. It’s therapeutic and noncommittal. It’s brief but empowering.

Most of the time when I drive, I’m singing my heart out, I’m listening to podcasts, I’m trying to squeeze in one more chapter of my audiobook, I’m working out the kinks of an essay I’ve been trying to write for months, but sometimes I am yelling, I am throwing my hands up, I am laughing sarcastically, I am shaking my head, saying a slow, drawn out, “woooowww.”

And it feels good. It feels so, so good.