Driving Around in a Broken Car

You don’t fix a broken car; you work on it

My first car was a wreck. A hand-me-down that my grandmother had never driven, that ugly and malfunctioning 2001 Honda Civic was such a threat to the general public that my hometown had laws prohibiting me from driving it on certain days of the week.

I loved that car with all my heart.

I saw myself in that menace-on-wheels that called itself a car. Where the Honda had a defective wheel that squealed with every turn, I had a shoulder that would crack and pop, sending pain through my body whenever I tried to do a strenuous task. In the scratched electric-blue paint I saw the scars and marks on my skin that I refused to talk about. When the engine roared as the automatic gearbox failed to make the change, I would hear myself trying and failing to get out of bed in the morning.

Its unreliable radio echoed my own voice, which never learned to sing. The exhaust port, my lungs—tired from smoking one too many cigarettes in high school. The dirty seats looked as disregarded and disheveled as I did, and the ever-malfunctioning wiring mirrored my own swings from mania to fatigue to mania again.  

Most of all, I loved that car because I knew someone had to.

And I also loved it because, despite its numerous, sometimes hazardous flaws—cosmetic, mechanic, and otherwise—it kept running. It worked. It carried me to school and work and my house. It picked up the first girl I ever truly loved from the airport. It gave me somewhere to sleep when it was too early to go to class and too late to go home.

That car gave me a joy and confidence I couldn’t find elsewhere when we drove a little too fast down crowded streets, singing “American Pie” as loud as we both could. Secure between doors that smelled like nothing I’ve smelled since and a sunroof that wouldn’t work most of the time, I was free from the fear and the judgment of the people that would stare as we drove by. In those brief moments, we were free: a madman and his car.

Although I knew somebody had to, loving that car wasn’t always easy. My love was unconditional, maybe, but never effortless. 

I struggled to love that Honda of mine at times: whenever the same tail light would go out yet again, whenever I saw it parked next to all the shiny new models with Bluetooth speakers and working AC. I’m sure the car had its moments, too. I’m sure it struggled to love me, too: all those times I forgot to check its oil and antifreeze, the times I tried to force it to take it from zero to sixty to merge onto the highway, and all those scratches and bumps that were caused by my carelessness. 

It never occurred to me to have the car fixed—except in urgent situations. The car saw a mechanic only when its essential function of taking-me-places was threatened—and even then, it only received the bare minimum care necessary to keep it running.

How do you fix a constant state of exhaustion and distraction, and a spine that’s angled funny, and indifference that persists no matter what you do? How do you fix depression and anxiety and chronic pain and self-loathing and body issues? The answer is simple: you don’t. Dealing with just one of those problems can feel like an insurmountable task. Dealing with all of it is simply impossible.

So you fix the car when it’s an emergency; you solve the problem just enough to keep the engine running. You clean the paint when you can afford it. You can’t do much more than that. 

And then, suddenly, an additional disaster hits. Pandemic lockdown meant the electric blue Honda Civic that had given me so much joy as we sped down the highway and sang simply sat exposed in its street-parking spot, lifeless and inert. 

Then, the battery was stolen. The culprit wrenched open the hood and snipped the wires, leaving the car plundered and disgraced. It was the very last straw.  

My parents knew a friend of a friend and the car quickly sold for next to nothing—still way more than it should’ve.

Weeks passed. Restrictions lifted. I started going places again.

About four or five months later, as I walked down one of the streets near my home, I saw a car parked next to the sidewalk. It was a neatly polished and clean 2001 electric-blue Honda Civic. If you didn’t know any better, you could’ve mistaken it for last year’s model.

Was it? It couldn’t be. All four wheels had the same diameter and it had lenses on both tail lights.Still, I had to know for sure. So I got closer to it, scanning for all the familiar signs of disrespect and neglect. I looked for scratches in the paint and rust on the license plate. I passed my hand over the driver’s door, where I could still feel the well-known dent I could no longer see it from afar, significantly less noticeable underneath a new and even coat of paint.

I knew the person that the car had gone to, a broad-shouldered man in his mid-sixties who earned just below minimum wage. The Honda mesmerized me in its like-new skin. I had no idea how he managed to turn my old, overly-indulgent analogy into a respectable vehicle.

How do you fix a useless electrical system, and an engine that’s always under a little too much strain, and scratched paint and a bent door? You start with the battery.

Once the battery is fixed, you schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist who prescribes you the antidepressants you’ve long been needing. Then, you get the hood fixed and buy new cables. 

When the time is right, you taper off the antidepressants and go on ADHD medication. You drop out of college and re-enroll into a major that makes you happy. With a little patience, you save enough money to get a fresh coat of paint, and you get an MRI for the shoulder and X-rays for the back. You start going to physiotherapy. You buy a spare wheel and get a haircut. You change the oil and call an old friend.

You don’t fix a broken car; you work on it. Until, little by little, it doesn’t look so broken anymore.

My shoulder still hurts when I’m stressed or it’s cold outside, but I can do a push-up again. My spine is still a little crooked, but I no longer have days where I can’t get out of bed from the pain.

Some days, I even look in the mirror and like what I see.

I still drive around in a broken car. The process is long, hard, and costly, but the wheels seem to squeak a little less now that I’m taking care of them.

And I’ve learned to love it exactly because of its flaws. Because in spite of them, this broken car of mine works. It takes me places.