Forbidden Anger

Anger is frightening, but to forbid anger is to leave out one of the primary colors, like allowing yellow and blue but no red. Anger was definitely forbidden in my childhood home, even though I witnessed my parents having bouts of the forbidden emotion all the time. They'd throw my sister around the room, her arms and legs flying everywhere, or my mother in a tantrum would smash dinner plates on the kitchen floor, then get in the car and screech off, driveway gravel flying. My step-father liked to yell, and once he kicked the wall and broke his toe. When I was a teen I would angrily slam a few doors and run out of the house. I wasn't allowed to be angry, though, so my mother would get in the big ugly brown Ford station wagon the size of a motor boat and chase me down. She'd pull up beside me as I ran along the road, throw the door open, and shout "Get in, get in the car, now!" I eventually realized it was much more effective to leave quietly, and that's exactly what I did, at age 17. I just walked out the door and closed it quietly behind me.