My car had been acting up for the past few weeks, but I shoved that thought into the same mental closet where I kept every other disaster I couldn’t afford. I needed it running, so I pretended that willing it forward counted as something. The heat and defrost were dead—an $800 repair I absolutely did not have—but winter was coming, and I told myself I’d survive it the same way I survived everything else: denial and stubbornness.
The driver’s seat was broken too, stuck flat so I had nothing to hold me upright. Another problem. Another decision. Another $200 I didn’t have. When I drove away after the seat replacement, I felt cautiously hopeful—almost euphoric. In control or at least pretending I was. I told myself this was what progress felt like. I planned to spend the afternoon Door Dashing to earn back what I’d just spent. It made sense in that delusional way things do when you stop looking too closely.
A few hours later, the car started resisting my plea to keep moving toward the fragile fantasy that maybe things were turning around. I tried to smother the rising dread. It couldn’t quit on me. Not now. Panic took the wheel, and I kept going anyway, running on fumes, stalling every time I slowed down. I knew it wasn’t good. I knew it was about to self‑destruct just like everything else in my life. Giving up on me.
Fueled by determination, denial, and the belief that forward motion was the same thing as safety, I prayed it was just out of gas. I spent the last of my money filling the tank. It didn’t help. It still stalled, refusing to go over 20 mph. Another internal “WTF” ricocheted through my skull, but I kept going, desperate to get back to the apartment and pretend none of this was happening.
Somehow, on sheer misplaced determination, I limped home. I was convinced this was all a cruel joke from fate—another cosmic reminder that the universe wasn’t about to let me inch toward the ever‑elusive idea of being okay. I didn’t realize I was already burning through the last of my margin.
I pulled into a spot in front of my apartment, desperately needing to hide from what was coming to get me. When I got inside, I locked the doors and hid in my room. I needed something—anything—to tether me to whatever version of reality I was pretending to live in. But of course, I wasn’t allowed to be that lucky.
Hiding wasn’t going to fix anything. Doom was already circling, tightening, like it had been waiting for this exact moment to strike. And this time I couldn’t outrun it. I didn’t even have a barely-functioning car to pretend I was escaping in. I just sat there on the floor, shaking, trying to convince myself the walls were solid, that the ground wasn’t tilting, that I hadn’t finally slipped off the thin edge I’d been balancing on.
But the truth was clawing at me—everything was unraveling again, faster than I could grab it. I was out of tricks, out of money, out of motion. All I had left was the sound of my own breathing and the sinking realization that I had nothing left to bargain with.
Read more about the mess I’ve been trying to survive, →
I'm Still Here. Somehow... 