My partner drives like a maniac. And I’m not talking like the joke cliché of a woman screaming ‘slow down, you’re going to kill us’, to the man driving 10 miles an hour. No, I truly mean he drives like a mad man. He knows how to drive, but the second he gets behind the wheel, his dick grows 10 sizes and he becomes aggressive. We sold ‘our’ car two years ago. He didn’t tell me how much he sold it for, and I never got any of the money. Since he sold it to a friend, I suspect he basically gave it away. I was just glad it was gone and I didn’t have to make up excuses not to go anywhere with him.

This story wasn’t the first time I was in a car with him. But it was in the first week.

We’re going up a long road. Far ahead, I can see cars sitting, waiting for the light to turn green. There were four lanes, and they all had four or five cars in line. We’re maybe a quarter of a mile away. He’s going the speed limit. Once we’re on the straight, he speeds up. And keeps speeding up. My foot involuntarily makes breaking motions. I tell him to slow down and he ignores me. The point where I would have started breaking, if I were driving, comes and goes. The point where at our speed, I don’t think we’ll be able to stop without hitting the stationary cars, comes and goes. I said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I brace myself. He says, ‘They’ll move out of the way.’ (remember, four cars deep, sitting at a red light. They are going nowhere.) When he finally hits the brakes, the nose of the car goes down, I’m thrown forward and we come to a screeching halt. Inches from the car in front of us. I must have looked pretty pale. He just laughed and laughed.

He did it once when his brother was in the car. His brother pitched a mild-mannered fit and told him to stop. He did stop driving like that when his brother was in the car. But he still did when it was only me.

Before him, I was a good, solid driver. But I was in a different country then. The roads were smaller, very winding, and I became very afraid of being on the road, in a car with him. I became so afraid, I didn’t update my license and have never driven again.

The years passed, I became more afraid. First, I always hung onto the door handle. Then I hung on to the seat belt. It just got worse and worse. He’d aggressively move into the flow of traffic. Cut people off. Stopped hard. Rode on peoples bumpers. My heart would pound, I’d hold my breath. And after a few years, I just closed my eyes, held onto the seat belt, and waited to die. If I told him to slow down, he’d go so slow, barely over idle speed.  I was afraid someone would ram us, expecting us to be going the speed limit. He’d sneer and say, see, I’m slowing down.

I slowly stopped going out with him. I stopped socializing because I couldn’t take being in a car with him, and my disability made using public transport impossible. If I had to go, I’d spend the entire trip with my eyes closed. One day he noticed my eyes closed and just laughed. He practically pissed himself, he laughed so hard.

I thought he was just being a dick.

But looking back now, I think it was torture. Not a joky kind of torture, but real, dangling off a face cliff torture. Every single time I got in a car with him driving, I expected to die. He put me in physical danger day after day. He liked the control, I guess. My face full of fear. Pale and trembling. It was fun for him. A good laugh.

edit:

I guess I should say how this has impacted my life. I can’t drive. I’m afraid of narrow roads. I will not get in a car with my partner driving. My socializing has tanked, I just don’t now. (I can sit in a taxi, though, without fear. I expect them to be respectful drivers and so far, they have been.) The sound of a car’s breaks squeaking, even if I’m not in a car, makes my heart pound in fear. I am terrorized of cars, driving, travel, and roads. I think I might be for the rest of my life.