At Milford Train Station

I missed the train home from the beach one weekend last month; my boyfriend was driving and we watched the damned thing pull out of the station from 20 yards away.

It was the end of a beautiful weekend, sunny and June, we’d celebrated his birthday with friends, and drank, and laughed, and relaxed into each other all weekend. Or that was how it felt at the time.

And then we missed the train by under a minute and the man who I spent all weekend kissing departed abruptly and the angry stranger I‘ve come to recognize as his ever-present sidekick appeared in his place.

Does it have to be this way? I asked quickly, hoping we could pretend it had been—well, what it was: one of life’s inconvenient bitchy things. A missed train. A lost hour—mine, not his; he was dropping me off at the station and leaving to spend the rest of the afternoon with his son. His day hadn’t lost an hour, mine had. I thought that simple question might be enough of a jolt—maybe it could snap him out of what I was afraid was about to come. Maybe we could agree that while a missed train meant re-thinking my day, it certainly would not mean catastrophic life alteration.

I was mistaken. It was catastrophic, apparently. The train was pulling out of the station as we pulled into the parking lot, and all hell broke loose inside that car. I started crying but he didn’t notice. He was enraged. The beautiful weekend was gone, the relaxed Sunday was gone, a catastrophe had indeed occurred.

Because we'd underestimated the traffic and I had missed a train.

The color of his rage, I imagine, is bright red. He sees nothing but it. Nothing, no one else exists. Not me, certainly.

This is when I thought, There is something we give up when we love a person who is very angry, and not willing or able to acknowledge his own anger.

For one thing, we give up some of the spontenaeity of life. We have to let go of the previously held belief that we can react honestly to what’s happening; it might trigger a drama that it is not worth living through. In that moment in the car, there just wasn’t any room for me to say, Damn, I really wanted to be home by 4.

We give up the ability to feel our own anger, as it really is, in moments. It is so overpowering, this need to extinguish another person’s rage, that often we forget to feel what we feel first—or we’re bullied out of it, or we’re frightened by the consequences of how many hours or days or fighting will follow if we do, or we’re dreaded out of it. Oh god, no, please don’t make him start. I’ll be funny, I’ll be accommodating, I’ll be compliant—just please don’t make him start.

Eventually, for this angry man that I share a home with, the storm blows over, the rage ship sets sail, and a more sorrowful cloud begins to pass over. He is sorry. The moment, for him, has changed. He has let go of what he needed to release and now regret can move in to fill the space.

And there I am, in what has become a familiar dilemma. If I were to say, OK, glad you feel better, now can we talk about what your outburst felt like from the passenger seat?, I run the risk of Act II. Remember, this is not a man who wants to acknowledge his anger—my using the word “anger,” in fact, can be enough to start another outburst, or at the least days of the silent treatment.

If I say nothing, which I have started to do—if I wait the few hours, then accept his apology, listen to his explanation of what made the experience so bad for him—then on the outside, the storm has passed.

Here’s the problem: The weather inside of me is still storming.

I’m angry, too. Expressing it in the moment would be masochistic. Expressing it at a later date turns out to be no less fraught.

So what’s a woman to do?

Better question: What is a woman who has lived her whole life dancing around the choreography of another person’s storms of rage—mother, boyfriends, ex-husband—what is that woman to do?

Last week I turned 47.

So here's what I've got.

I promise each of you what I’ve promised myself: My 48th birthday will not come, another year will not pass, with this question lying beside me as I fall asleep at night and greeting me as I wake up each morning.

Love is lovely, companionship is wonderful, the joy of building a life together is too complex to wrap up into one good word. But none of it, in fact not all of it bundled together and wrapped in a birthday ribbon, is worth the price of a peaceful life.

I don’t know what a woman is to do.

I only know what this woman can do.

I am beginning to imagine, and plan, and dream about, my bittersweet escape.