Road Rage

on fear, near misses, and the feeling that something in us is starting to fray

This week I’ve been involved in two road rage incidents. One feels easy enough to write off, but two in the same week feels… consequential. Like something I’m meant to look at a little closer.

Both happened within a few blocks of my house.

The first started with a woman aggressively passing me, cutting me off while flipping me off - only to get stuck at a red light. I was moving into the left turn lane, which meant I was about to pull up right next to her and her whole performance was about to collapse in real time.

I watched it register in her rearview mirror. She had this evil smile on her face, and then something shifted.

She lurched her car out of the straight lane and into the left turn lane, cutting me off again - but this time she slammed on her brakes. Not at the light. Not even close to it. Just… in the middle of the road.

It didn’t feel careless. It felt intentional. Like she was trying to cause an accident. It was insanely terrifying.

I remember the exact moment my body registered fear. It keeps replaying in my mind.

I didn’t know if she had a gun.
I didn’t know what she was capable of.
I didn’t know why she had decided I was the person she was going to do this to.

I had just been coasting along, nearly home, thinking about what a lovely day it was.

And yes - I did flip her off after she flipped me off. Maybe that made me her target. Perhaps that was a mistake (and one I’ve reflected on a lot since). Either way, the shift felt immediate.

I laid on my horn as I looked at her brake lights in front of me and just kept thinking: please keep driving.

There’s something disorienting about realizing how quickly a normal moment can turn into something dangerous. How thin the line actually is.

She eventually drove off. I sped up just enough to get a picture of her license plate before calling the police, my hands still shaking.

I slowly inched forward through my neighborhood, trying to get my composure back while approaching my house. I had sobbed during and especially after my phone call with the police. A needed guttural cry.

Why does everything feel so chaotic in the world right now?

And then, right as I pulled up to my house, I came upon a white heron. My favorite bird. My messenger.

I’ve never seen one in my neighborhood before. Not once.

She was just standing there. Still. Waiting, almost.

For a second everything slowed down. The adrenaline, the noise in my head, the tightness in my chest, my tears - all of it softened.

And then, as I pulled closer, she lifted.

That slow, deliberate, almost impossibly graceful takeoff. Long legs trailing behind her, wings stretching wider than you expect.

And she was gone.

And then this morning - two days later. I’ve managed to calm the scene of the woman slamming on her brakes from replaying in my mind over and over. I cleaned my car - thinking a little reset of the vibes would be good for us in there.

I had been awake for maybe 30 minutes. We had been on the road for less than one. A normal morning, taking my daughter to school.

I’m at the intersection right by my house, waiting to turn left. The arrow turns green - a clear, protected turn.

And as I move into the intersection, a car comes flying through it. Full speed. Running the red light.

I slam on my brakes again. My puppy flies off the seat. My daughter’s fearful eyes lock with mine through the rearview mirror.

Another one of these intense fucking moments where everything stops.

And I see him - window down, screaming. He wasn’t just yelling. He was foaming. Spit flying everywhere. This ravenous little bulldog of a man, spewing anger and rage at me for something I truly cannot fathom.

This is at 7:15 in the morning.

And I just keep thinking… what is happening to us?

People honk the second a light turns green.
Everyone is looking at their phones.
People are going 10, 15 over - and then raging at you for not risking your life to keep up.

There’s this constant edge now. This hair-trigger energy. Like everyone is carrying something they don’t know what to do with - and it’s leaking everywhere, but especially out onto the road.

I keep coming back to the same question: What are we all doing?

Because this doesn’t feel like a coincidence. It feels like something in the air. Like everyone is carrying too much, moving too fast, one small moment away from tipping over.

It makes me wonder about how we’re supposed to move through a world like this.

It makes me wonder how we protect ourselves from people like that - from energy like that - without becoming it. Without hardening. Without closing off. Without losing the part of us that still knows how to trust.

It makes me wonder how we hold any faith in systems that don’t always protect us. How we make sense of how quickly something can turn. How we still manage to smile at strangers we pass by.

And then I think about the white heron. How it stood there, completely untouched by any of it. And when it lifted, it did so slowly - almost effortlessly - like it trusted the air to hold her. Like there was never any doubt.

And when the flashes come back - when my mind starts replaying all the ways those scenarios could have gone wrong - that is what I come back to. The stillness. To the way she lifted. To the grace and beauty held within her flight.

I let my body settle instead of spiral. I put my hand on my heart and I take a deep breath into the places clinched with fear and worry.

Because it would be its own kind of loss to move through the world braced for impact - to let fear and rage shape everything - when there are still moments, somehow, that remind you there is another way to be here.