A Letter To My First Car

Dear Car,

I have owned you since my junior year of high school, which was a full six years ago. You were everything I wanted — cute, affordable, approved by my mother and, most importantly, you were a car. That’s all I really cared about.

But I didn’t know you would become such a symbol of the past six years of my life. When we first met, I was a shadow of the girl who drives you now. And now it has come time for us to part ways; time to close that chapter of my life and start anew with one of those young whippersnappers who doesn’t yet know how to be as faithful and loyal as you have been. But I can’t trade you in tomorrow before telling you a few things.

Thank you for getting me to and from school every day, to a place I hated with people I loved. Thank you for safely transporting them with me wherever we chose to go, and for tolerating our loud music and awful singing. And for believing me when I thought they would all be my friends forever.

Thanks for letting me dance like an idiot when a boy asked me out for the first time, and for letting me cry on your steering wheel when he told me we were better as friends. And I know there was really nothing you could do, but why’d you let me make out with those boys I didn’t like who weren’t right for me? Couldn’t you have given me a hint or something? I guess you offered reflections of me in your mirrors. Maybe I just chose not to see.

For accompanying me on my soul-searching year in California, I can never truly express my gratitude. That year changed my life in more ways than I can count, and if it weren’t for you braving Sacramento traffic with me for an hour each day, listening to me sob over getting lost, and bringing me to the job I detested, I wouldn’t have found my way to where I am now. You stretched yourself for thousands of miles so I could figure myself out.

In the last few years of our time together, you’ve watched me change the most. You took me from Sacramento to Idaho, but we both know you took me much further than that. You led me to my career, to lifelong friends, to a person I truly love, and to an organization I will never forget. You brought me to my future, regardless of where it goes from here.

Thank you for never giving up on me. And please know that I am not giving up on you. I just need you to do me this one last favor and let me close out our chapter.

It’s been a wild ride.

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