The end of my Annus Horribilis

At the beginning of December last year, I was cleaning the snow off my car as it warmed up on a snowy Denver evening. A man approached me, asking a question about a cab. One had just pulled away from the curb so I pointed in that direction and went back to cleaning. A second man rode up on a mountain bike and the first demanded my purse. I don't carry one, and when I told him that, the man on the bike pulled a gun from his sweatshirt pocket and the guy on foot said, "We're not kidding. Where's the purse?" I insisted again that I don't carry one. He said, "I'm sorry, but we're going to have to borrow your car tonight." He got in and I started walking toward the closest people... with the guy on the bike following at a distance. As the man in my car pulled away, I said a kind of goodbye to a faithful car.

Sure, I believed at some level it would come back to me. My parents' cars have been stolen several times and they came back. A big part of me believed that would be the case here. That started to shift when, while doing Christmas shopping, I got into a conversation about auto thefts. She'd had a car just like mine stolen out of a parking lot. And it didn't come back to her. She gave me a guardian angel key ring and wished me the best of luck.

December 31st passed, and then the 30 day anniversary of the theft passed, and I collected my title, remaining key, and all the paperwork for mailing. I put it off for a couple of days, and then finally put it in the mail. That was last week.

On Saturday, I bought a new car. I bought the car I would've bought 5 years ago if my partner hadn't pitched a fit about how driving Subaru's made her feel poor. Well, that should read, "my ex-girlfriend." In the 5 years of owning the instead car, we've had three breakups and two attempted reconciliations. The first of those breakups was on January 7, 2002. I remember this date because it was 2 days after my 5th anniversary at the company I was working with. It was also the day I was laid off. Yes, that's right. The break-up and the lay-off were the same day. And I was stuck making payments on a car I'd chosen because I thought we were in this relationship together... through better and worse.

Today I got the insurance settlement for that instead car. It takes care of every debt I still have from that year of heartbreak and unemployment. It pays for a couple more things I incured trying to get back together with her. In short, it is an end.

There are chapters in our lives, but I think life is a multi-volume work with major and minor arcs. I think I just finished Volume 3. I can't wait to see what the next book holds.