STATE OF MIND

My beloved Beatrice spent fourteen years of life with me. I miss her…kinda.

She was just a baby when we met. Straight off the line with only six miles to her name. After a short stint of traveling back and forth from home to work to parties to softball fields and back home, she stunk of cigarettes and ball bags. It was a wonderful smell that only others sniffed, as I had become immune to the enjoyable flavors.

On her third birthday, I filled her full of the basic necessities. She was driven up a ramp and hauled twenty-seven hundred miles across the country. If not for the closed container she rode in, I would have been more fearful for her life. But she came back to me, safe and sound and ready to start a new life.

Seventy-two-mile daily round trips on the highway gave her the muscles she needed to stay fit and slender in the warm, arid air. I look back and realize that the moderate temperatures are what kept her alive and well for so long. We drove up mountains. We refused to press the brake pedal when traveling back down those mountains. On a side note, her precious pads only required changing and the rotors turned at 104,000 miles. Our irritation for braking was mutual.

Beatrice showed her age when she was shipped back across the country at eleven years old. Wrinkles formed on her bumpers and small scrapes were visible on her side doors. She began creaking, as we all have a tendency to do as we age. Her heart, or engine, had some pumping problems and I knew it was time for the inevitable…I fought that inevitable.

Three state license plates later, I realized why I held onto that old girl for so long. Yes, we were bonded, but that bond, I think, was deeper than a lady and her girlfriend hanging out on long road trips. Beatrice represented me on a deeper level than I was willing to admit. Let me explain.

Near the end, friends and family members made sure to tell me that they refused to ride in my Beatrice. “She smells like shit.” There were plenty of burn holes in the carpet and cushions. Dried boogers crusted the side of the driver seat because where else do you put boogers after you pick your nose? The oil burning on the hot engine made me feel I needed to keep the garage door open for an hour after driving; so not to catch the place on fire. She was old and everywhere I went, it was obvious that I looked poor. I don’t use this term lightly.

I felt poor.

When you’re broke, you have no money. It’s a lack of funds in the bank account. Poor, on the other hand, is a mental state of mind, not a financial one. In this sense, I didn’t feel like I was worth much. When I traveled for work to often times run down areas, it looked as though I fit in. Please understand, I’m not criticizing any economic status in this world or hourly wages earned. I’m condemning how I felt as a human, poor. And I think we can agree that the way you feel inside can easily represent how you portray yourself. Right?

Excuses. I was so proud to say I didn’t have a car payment, that by driving around an old car didn’t mean anything. But in my case, it meant everything. If you are an avid reader of this blog, you may have picked up by now that I have a driving desire to feel my passion has purpose, and both those ideologies, passion and purpose, go hand in hand in order for me to be a good human. I wasn’t feeling like I was fulfilling my purpose because I lost track of my passion. Beatrice represented these feelings. I spent the past five years wallowing in my own self-pity and showing the world, or at least this little farm town, how I felt about myself.

I’m no longer poor. Instead of maintaining an image that didn’t suit me, I picked myself up by the safety belt, got some new tires, a new paint job, and have now set out into the world with a new adventure on the horizon. After quite a few conversations with Julia, my happy, yet slightly used Wrangler, we’ve agreed that together we’ll seek new adventures with love, passion, and purpose running through our engines.