It's Just a Car...Or Is It? Learning to Embrace Me

About a week ago Barrett and I sat and talked about our goals and some financial decisions we should make when his new job begins, and then later when my new career begins. It was a good check-in, and I am thankful to be in a relationship where this happens when it needs to. We talked about vehicles, and possibly selling my Charger and getting him a newer truck until I was done with nursing school. I sat and listened, knowing that the Jetta we have is newer, potentially more reliable, and costs about half as much to keep fueled as my car. I reminisced over the fact that I had barely even driven my car the past year because it wasn't the smartest option. As we talked, and I tried to keep calm, tears began rolling down my face at the thought of selling my orange beauty. Get a grip, Sarah I thought, it's just a car, and you can get something new later on. But is it just a car? Sometimes what should be just an object has sentimental attachment to us for other reasons. My car does, and I don't want a new one. 

One of the hardest lessons I have learned in the last year or so is that sometimes niceness gets you nowhere. I even cringe typing that. I was taught to be nice, to be amicable; I hate making a scene. Deep down I do want everyone to like me. It is no big secret that my ex and I are not on great terms. I tried. We tried. And I am not here to bash. That is not what this blog has ever been for. But I have learned that niceness is sometimes construed as weakness, and that niceness does not mean others will reciprocate. Sometimes you have to be tough. Sometimes you have to cut ties. Sometimes these things become necessary to protect yourself, and often in my case, necessary for me to do what I feel is best for my children. Sometimes that means things get worse before they'll ever get better, and sometimes that means burning bridges (that maybe should've never been built). Sometimes, rather often, it means being who I need to be. 

 

I have talked of my divorce on my blog quite a bit. While it does not define me, it is part of me. It has changed me. In many ways, as clichéd as it may sound, I was refined by the fire. It has taken years to decide who I am again, and who I want to be. I am still deciding, and it is a tough, but extremely necessary process. 

Not that long ago, in a kingdom not that far away, a girl was coaxed into giving up the only cute car she had ever had in exchange for a mini-van she didn't want. Disclaimer here: I am not knocking mini-vans, many people love them. If you are a proud mini-van owner, more power to you. To me, the mini-van took on a sentimental value that was not good or healthy. It was one more step in "taming" me to be the wife someone else wanted me to be.  Believe it or not, I was a bit of a wild child in high school (close, long-lost friends feel free to laugh and nod here), and often was looked at in those years as something that needed to be shaped into the perfect wife, an animal needing to be broken. The mini-van represented a part of me gone, and I resented the fact that I had been weak and (begrudgingly) given in. 

Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, I dated the resident "bad boy." He was older, lots of fun, and drove a red Barracuda with a white, vinyl, convertible top. I loved that car and all that it represented: driving too fast, bare feet up on the dash, music playing too loud, staying out too late, and stolen kisses. Part of me loves the adrenaline of a roller coaster, the thrill of the open ocean, candlelight dancing, and too dark lipstick. This is a part of me that I have learned slowly to re-embrace. It doesn't need tamed. It is these same things that allow me to bat my son's pitches in the yard while wearing a dress, spontaneously suggest a road-trip just so we can eat good Chinese food by the beach, and also the part of me that longs to be an ER nurse where I will never know just what to expect. Maybe to some the thought of motherhood, being a good wife, and being a dedicated soccer mom are somehow ensconced by the mini-van image. But I am these things, and will do them all and more from my bright orange car.

Barrett and I were dating when he brought that car off his friend's car lot to show me. To impress me he later said. I fell in love. I was already in love with the man, but as I sat behind the wheel of the car and drove it a few times, I was in love with the car too and the freedom it represented as I rebuilt my life. I blasted the music, and enjoyed the appraising looks of other drivers. Barrett and his friend helped me get out of my van loan into the Charger, and I never looked back. THIS was more me. Teenage boys I taught loved it, the staff at Oil Can Henry's talked to me about the Hemi, and on more than one occasion I tested the speed of the car (I am sure it can go faster, but 130 mph was my limit!). I had always been a cautious, even fearful driver, but now driving was fun!  This car has become a symbol to me of embracing the things I felt I lost and still wanted to be. I love that my sons think it is cool, and I don't care if it is shallow of me that part of me digs the image they have of me being a "cool" mom-a a mom that snorkels, water slides, and zip lines with them, and a mom that drives a shiny orange and black car that their friends whisper is "sweet!" on the rare occasions I get to pick them up from school. I will take "cool" mom as often as I can get it, since I know in the years that lie ahead there will be many "uncool" moments as I lay down the law.

 And forgive me for being crass, but mainly, what the car represents to me, is me giving my ex a big middle finger salute, as I embrace who I am and who I want to be. For me.

So maybe it is just a car, but then again, maybe not.