the sound of a car pulling up the driveway

For years, I thought everyone grew up afraid of the sound of a car pulling up their driveway. I’d bolt to the living room windows and carefully peer out the closed blinds, lifting just one wooden panel up to see.

My dad was always a source of my instant panic. Was he coming over? Was he in a good mood? Did Mom know he was visiting today?

When I was a baby, I was crawling on the floor of the living room while my mom and dad fought. This is a story repeated to me by my father himself. My mom didn’t want him to take the piano from the house during the separation because he was the only musician in the family. He did DJ gigs and constantly played with his band for extra money. This piano was where he practiced outside of his keyboards.

My mom said that when the kids grew up, they could play it, so it belonged to the house. She said he didn’t deserve it because of all his problems, so my dad figured, well, if he couldn’t have it, no one could. So he picked up the vacuum from the floor and lifted it over his head, and with hateful momentum, he brought it down over the piano.

A piece of the vacuum broke in the crash and shot into the air, aimed at the chandelier above me. Both my dad and mom watched in fear as the fixture smashed into a thousand pieces of glass and rained down atop me. My mother picked me up as I screamed, and my dad stood gawking.

He left and moved to Florida for five years. Every day, he told me he thought about how he almost killed his baby girl. So he started with self-help books and decided he didn’t want to be angry anymore.

He came back to New York after some time, less angry, but I was six and didn’t know how bad he was before. He still yelled. He still ripped my brother’s door off its hinges and flung it across the floor, nearly hitting me. He still broke things, smashed things.

But he also pushed me on the swings, took me to the park, bought me toys at Walmart, and took me to Disney World.

That was the hardest part. My dad was not only the person I was afraid of: he was also my dad.

So when he would come over, I didn’t know which version of him I would get. But that was what men were like, my mom assured me, my grandmother reiterating behind her. So I thought men were creatures that women had to put up with.

It’s weird being an adult child of an angry father. Every time I talk to people, I’m afraid of their anger, so I’m always incredibly polite, helpful, adamant about not being in the wrong. Saying I’m sorry prematurely. And it’s all because I’m afraid of being sucker punched by their reactions.

A broken glass could set my dad into screaming fits of rage and emotional abuse.

Why are you so stupid?
Why weren’t you more careful?
Do you know how much that costs?

What’s worse? My dad isn’t that person anymore, but I’m still afraid of him, and most men.

So up until I was eighteen, I didn’t really know that men didn’t have to be angry. I didn’t know that other people didn’t get scared from the sound of their dad pulling up their driveway.

But I did know many other girls who were scared of these men. Scared of the noises surrounding them. Scared of the moments before the anger came.

Now I study people. I watch for shifts in tone, in energy, in silence—waiting for the moment someone might explode. It’s a kind of vigilance that once kept me safe. But it’s not a great way to live.

And that’s why I write and share my stories: to help myself process why I’m like this, but also to connect with anyone else who had these experiences too. No one has to be alone.