I never used to do this

     I have a piece of writing to share from my stream of consciousness that hit me after a very contentious phone call with a body shop that still has my CX30, after two months.

    It also fits my theme for my master's. It's not very pleasant to read. I'm sorry in advance.

I never used to yell at service workers. I worked in the service industry since I was old enough to work, I knew what it was like. I have a temper but I always try to be understanding of short staffed shifts, poor management, and food that just needs to cook.

I will never be understanding of mechanics who want to take advantage of people.\

When I first broke down in Dani in California, I took her to a mechanic in Oxnard who was the worst one I’d ever experienced. Maybe I’d been blessed finding mine, but they were one in a million, and I should’ve known. From the start, he treated me like a whitewashed girl who knew nothing.

He claimed I needed an oil change before even looking at Dani. I listed the last oil change and her current level of oil. He brought up other maintenance stuff I didn’t even bother listening to. I interrupted him and started listing the repairs I’d had done, starting with the most recent.

“Oh, she knows her car!” he said, delightedly.

It was a fake level of delight and I could tell. He was Hispanic, and I knew from my own father and his family that the toxic masculinity within Hispanic culture runs deep. But whatever, I needed him to fix Dani, so I left her.

He wanted $2500 for the timing belt repair. I didn’t have that, so he agreed to fix her with a deposit and I pay the rest on delivery.

It took two weeks and the constant run around and phone tag. I flew to California to get her, and he tried to say I couldn’t have her because she was still broken and needed more time, she needed all of these things that she hadn’t needed when I brought her in.

I said no. I said give her to me now. He called me a bitch in Spanish, told his employees to finish up the bitch car, because the stupid bitch wanted it back.

I called my mechanics in tears, asking if I’d really break her. They said no. To bring her to them and they’d check her first thing in the morning. I went to the mechanic shop to get her, and my uncle came to yell at the owner, but the owner was nowhere to be found, mysteriously disappearing right when I said I’d be there.

The next day, she was totally fine. I didn’t deserve to be charged that much though. At my uncle’s advice, I contacted the Better Business Bureau and only paid $600 for a job my mechanics would’ve charged $1000 for. Iconic behavior from Jackie and Dani.

So I never used to yell at mechanics. I swear I didn’t. I tried to be nice with this guy but he was keeping Dani from me, and I have never had the best temper anyway. The one area of the service industry that I will not empathize with, unless there is total transparency, is auto.

A truck bed cover collided with my CX30.

I can’t catch a fucking break. It put two holes in my windshield, ripped my side mirror off, dented my hood, scratched my door, gouged my A frame pillar to shit, separated my dashboard, etc etc. The body shop my insurance let me have‒ since my mechanics don’t do body work‒ still has my car, even though it has been two months. A lot of it has been waiting for the dashboard to come. The first one was broken, the second one wasn’t for my car, and the third time was the charm.

I was told they would deliver it to the dealership on a certain day at a certain time. I called the dealership well after that time to ask. The dealership said they didn’t have it. I called the body shop. The body shop said they didn’t have it.

This is where I started to lose it. Who the hell had my car? I trusted the dealership, but the body shop had always been sort of dodgy with my phone calls so I was already losing my patience with them. 

I never used to do this.

I got a hold of the guy who works in the shop. I asked where my car was. He said at the dealership.

I never used to do this. 

I told him the dealership didn’t have it, so where the hell was it?

He told me to hold on, muted the phone, and came back panicked, asking if he could call me back in a few, and then he hung up.

Fine, fuck you too.

The lady called me twenty minutes later and said the car had been dropped off. I told her that it had not because I just spoke to the dealership. She told me that she had just dropped it off.

“So you’re there?” I asked. “You’re physically there, at the dealership?”

“Yes.”

“I want to talk to the service person,” I said, my temper rising and cresting like a wave, the cathartic release of all the times I bit back my yells.

“Of course, I can give you the number.”

I lost control.

“I don’t want a number. I don’t want a transfer, or a hold, or a muted phone. I want to hear you physically walk to the service guy, and give him the phone.”

Silence.

Then I hear walking.

The dulcet tones of a service guy telling me they just got the car and their estimate is EOD the next day.

Wonderful. I thanked him and he gave the phone back to her.

She tried explaining more and more but I was already so sick and tired of dealing with them. They want to detail it, she told me, and if I could only get it after work, then someone would wait for me.

I bet. I bet someone will wait for me, and I bet it’s because I lost my shit.

I never used to do this. They say grief changes us, and I’m not sure how losing a car is supposed to change someone, but I miss her in the present tense. I used the present tense version of miss but somehow it doesn’t feel like enough to say how much I miss her, and so I paired it with missing her in the present tense.

I miss her when I’m drunk, when I’m sober, when I’m riding the city bus, when I’m driving a rental car for work. I miss her in every heartbeat.

They say grief changes us, but I didn’t realize that it would alter me so much that I would consider all the destructive ways I used to handle things, and I would consider them seriously. There have been so many therapy sessions between the hospital and last May, but I think about knives‒ serrated, my favorite, or just a regular one‒ I think about drinks, I think about drinking until I find the knives funny or silly or not painful. I think about drinking until the idea of knives doesn’t make me feel guilty or ashamed or like I’m disappointing everyone I know.

Maybe that’s why I want to be drunk. It’s not my fault then. It won’t be my fault. That’s the cardinal rule of drinking. Nothing is your fault if you’re drunk.

I think about drinking until I’m selfish and destitute and no one wants to be around me, because then it won’t hurt anyone to lose me. I think about drinking until it drives people away.

Haha, get it? Drives? Okay.

I revisit the accident in my mind. I drove myself away from it. I drove myself away from the person I was, but I always drive myself right back to the scene of the crime, and hope I don’t get a metaphorical DUI.

I revisit the accident in my mind when I’m drunk because I read that most philosophers were drunk when they said their most iconic lines, and I am dying to answer the question that has been plaguing me.

Where does the love go when it is no longer pouring from our hands?

I am dying to answer the question.

I am dying to answer it.

I am dying.

I never used to do this.