*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events I experienced firsthand; used with permission.
Then he sold it for a hundred bucks without my permission.
My first car was a vintage 1982 Mercury Capri with a candy apple red interior to match its exterior. It had 80,000 original miles on it, and it handled like a soda can. I loved that car.
I bought my first car with money I had saved from birthdays and my first holy communion. It was just after my eighteenth birthday. I was unmarried.
After I got married, I continued driving my beloved Mercury. My husband drove a pickup truck. Due to a penchant for driving drunk, his truck was being repaired.
"Don't touch my car," I told him. I knew what would happen if he did. Besides, it was my sole property purchased with money I'd saved before we met. The car was registered, titled, and insured in my name only. It was my car.
I never drove his truck.
One night after I was asleep, my husband took the keys to my car out of my purse and drove my car without my permission. In other words, he stole my car. Then he took it out on the highway and crashed it into the guardrail.
He was drunk. So he didn't stop and wait for the police to arrive. Instead, he drove my poor battered car with its irreparably bent front axle and missing bumper and fender back to our house and parked it in the street in front of our mailbox.
The following morning, I found my husband passed out on the sofa and what remained of my car leaning to one side in the street. I was inconsolable.
Despite the damage to my car, my husband was unhurt. Once he sobered up, he was as good as new. I wish I could have said the same about my car.
I didn't have the money to pay to fix the car. It sat there for a few days, then a few weeks, then one day, it disappeared.
Turns out, my husband had sold it to one of his friends for a hundred bucks. I never saw my car again.
My husband didn't even give me the hundred dollars. He wouldn't even tell me who bought the car.
I wish I had been assertive enough to demand the return of my car, but I wasn't. Although I never forgave him for what he did, I let it go. "Letting it go" was the hallmark of my marriage. My husband got away with everything.
After several months without a car, I bought a used Chevy Camaro I couldn't afford by using a credit card with an interest rate that was too high. It was almost the same shade of red as my treasured Mercury Capri, but the interior was black like my husband's heart.
I still miss my first car; I don't miss my husband at all.
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