Scrapped.

[icebluenothing]

My poor dead truck is finally gone.

It had been sitting in my parking space at my condo since it died, over a year ago. I tried researching how to donate a vehicle to charity, but it all seemed terribly complicated -- I'm deeply phobic about incorrectly filed paperwork, and the one place I found that said they took care of all the paperwork never called me back.

I was going to drive the truck down to Olympia to give it to my sister, hoping that I could avoid having to go in reverse at any point the whole way down, but it turns out that if you let a truck just sit there for a year, it won't start the next time you try to use it. Who knew?

The management of my condo had been gently asking me all this time when I was going to get rid of it, and when I was going to stop parking my car in visitor spaces. Not too long after I failed to get the truck moving again, they finally put a note on my car saying they'd tow it if I parked it in a visitor space again. Fair enough, I figured.

In the end, I went to Pull-A-Part, a wrecking yard in Lynnwood, and found out they would indeed tow it away for free and take it off my hands for spare parts if I signed the title over to them. I wouldn't even need to be there for them to pick it up. So that's what I did, and one night I came home and it was just gone.

-----

Why a whole year?

Part of it's just the inertia and procrastination that plagues so many parts of my life. But it was also just frankly hard to do.

My dad told me, after he bought me the truck, not to fall in love with it. He told me too late. It was my first car, something that brought me my first real taste of freedom and independence and responsibility. I didn't get rid of it for so long because I didn't really want to.

. . . . Why is it so hard for me to let go of things when it's so easy for me to let go of people?

Comments

[speedie316.livejournal.com]

*hugs*
Things can't betray you, things can't lie to you, things don't suddenly change on you. Things are always there for you.
Then again, I'm a packrat who's trying to figure out how the hell I'm going to fit all of my things in the tiny house we're buying. lol.

[leenerella]

I felt the same way about my little Honda Accord. I sold it cheap to someone to use as a Burning Man vehicle, and after the festival was over and they were safely home, it died for the last time. *sigh*

I still miss it.

[noiseinmyhead.livejournal.com]

for future reference

all you really need to do is call the charity of your choce that takes the car and mail the title to the state...so if you have to do it again.....

. . . . Why is it so hard for me to let go of things when it's so easy for me to let go of people?

things are safe and don't talk back can't hurt you or be hurt by you
I don't know which option scares you more I suspect both at times.

[m-cobweb.livejournal.com]

Things are more reliable (or at least predictable) than people. I have a very unfortunate tendency to turn to things in situations of stress, particularly when those situations of stress involve loss or emptiness of any sort.

For some reason vehicles are especially difficult to say good-by to. And a first car, with all the associations it holds...ah yes.

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

I still miss my pickup. I had a long post put together talking about what crappy shape it was in and how I got it there, and how M. hated it because of the four-hour drive back from Powell's where we had to pack the three grocery bags full of books in around her because it was raining and we couldn't put them anyplace else, and how much it cost ($4688) and how I paid for it by changing oil and tires at Sears for $5/hr and how useless it really was but I bumped the back button on my mouse and it all went away and wouldn't come back. So this is all you get, except for the fact that I know how you feel my friend and it's OK to feel that way and there will, someday, be other cars that you love just as much or more but it won't ever be exactly the same.

And then you'll drive those new cars into the back of someone's Escort and you'll feel that way all over again, but that won't be exactly the same either. Not that I am preoccupied. :)

[iksander.livejournal.com]

if you're interested in letting go of "things," may i suggest looking into buddhist philosophies?

actually, a book that i found fairly energizing and life changing is "thoughts without a thinker" by mark epstein.. psychotherapy from a buddhist perspective.

also think of the freedom of not being anchored by stuff. that helped me sell all of my CDs (about 20 feet of them, if you stacked them up.. dunno how many that is).

or do you not want to get rid of your attachment to things? mootifying to this rreply!

(sorry to hear about the truck. it was darling)