Broken Hearts & Dead Car Batteries

My car won’t start. My 1992 Honda Accord won’t start. It makes that previously-unfamiliar but now all-too-familiar fade-to-black click click click and then…nothing.

It’s hot for September, if this were September anywhere other than LA. But here I am in Los Angeles, having just said goodbye to Sarah, who was kind enough to listen to me cry over a brunch of kale salad and iced coffee. The coffee was hers. I still don’t drink coffee.

I want to call you. I want to call you so badly and tell you I’m stuck with a dead car battery, what should I do? Please help! But I can’t.

You can’t call someone who two weeks ago, after five years of working for that young ideal of possible forever-ness, cut you out of his life after comparing what we were to a…diseased arm, in need of cutting off.

I try to stay calm, silently cursing myself for leaving mom’s old AAA card at home on my desk. Not that it would have helped.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we won’t be able to assist you unless the AAA card holder is present at the vehicle.”

I try calling my mom, but it goes to voicemail.

I want to text you. I want to text you so badly to say something, anything. Of course, I’ve been wanting to text you for two weeks now.

Don’t freak out. Don’t freak out. Stay calm. It’ll all be ok.

“It’ll all be ok.”

You used to say that all the time. “It’ll all be ok,” you’d say, as I flipped out for this or that reason. Couldn’t find a restaurant, didn’t like how I looked in those pants; freaking out about work, bemoaning the distance. It’ll all be ok.

But it’s not ok. It’s not ok right now I hurt so much some days I don’t know how to get out of bed. Every day I wake up with a start, usually from some vivid dream, and before my logical thoughts have a chance to kick in my heart reaches up to my brain and injects every thought of you. I cry, and I cry, and I think I’m done crying, and then I’m driving the 101 South and I remember how you look in your turquoise button-down, or I think about brushing your hair across your forehead, or I think of how your hand felt in mine that one time when we discussed the best way to hold hands as we walked to my car the last time I saw you. And I cry all over again. I don’t feel like myself. I don’t know what’s right, what’s wrong; who’s right, what I’m meant to do next; how to jump start a dead car battery.

It’ll all be ok.

How will this be ok? Everyone says it’ll be ok, I will survive and be stronger for it — will find someone who’s better for me, more perfect for me, a better fit for me. But they didn’t know you like I did. They didn’t know how you felt, sounded, smelled, looked, tasted, felt, felt, felt. I miss how you feel. I miss how you feel. I miss how we felt together. I know it was hard and hadn’t been going well for a while but I believed in working through the pain — not just cutting it off, like a diseased arm.

My car still won’t start.

I hesitate to knock on Sara’s apartment door and ask for help. I know she’s in a hurry and someone is picking her up soon for work. She was kind to sit with me as long as she did.

“You’ll get through this,” she had said, as I ate around the purple onions in my kale salad.

I walk back to her apartment. She answers the door.

“Uh…do you have jumper cables?” I ask, praying that a dead battery is in fact all that’s wrong with my 1992 Honda Accord.

She does, fortunately, though she admits she’s only ever jump-started a car once before. “I have no idea how we did it then,” she says.

Nevertheless she pulls her car up to mine, on this tiny street in Beverly Hills, where driving sometimes feels like a death wish.

She gets out her jumper cables and now it’s my turn to be strong and figure out what the fuck to do.

Cue, the internet. Thanks iPhone.

I try to follow the instructions on WikiHow, reading them out loud over and over, not really understanding what they say, afraid to actually touch the red clamp to the red knob for fear of what I imagine is an imminent explosion.

We’re both hesitant.

“Do you need some help?”

An elderly gentleman walks up, and I worry that he might try to help, but not know what to do. We ask if he’s jump-started a car, and he says it’s been a while.

The explosion feels nigh.

I’ve somehow managed to not think of you for a good 60 seconds. But then I do.

His navy polo shirt has cat hair on it, but his shirt’s tucked into his clean old man jeans that land a good half-inch above his shoes. His teeth are very white — veneers maybe. He tells us he’s helping his daughter move into her apartment down the street.

“I’m Olivia,” I say, extending my hand.

“Smiley. Dave Smiley.”

He’s Mister Smiley. Literally. I pause and appreciate this.

Do I have any tools, he wants to know.

Tools.

I was working on getting tools — you knew that right? Tools to fix my broken self. Tools to tighten and loosen the bolts that had come undone over years of watching angry people play angry games and hate themselves for it and then do it all over again. We can change our brains — you always said that. I was trying. I was and am trying and asking and looking for the tools I need. I can be a happy person. Olivia doesn’t have to be angry and anxious and jealous. I know I have been. I know I don’t want to be. Olivia. Olivia. What is that. Who is that.

I don’t have any tools in my car.

He says he just bought his daughter a tool box for her apartment, and I think of the tools my father has given me — common sense, a sense of humor, good work ethic, cleanliness and organization. But also impatience. Anxiety. An acute ability to horrible-ize things. To spiral out of control, laying waste to everything in reach, battering down those who care, but who just don’t know how to help anymore. Self-loathing.

Those things you saw me battle with, give in to, dislike, be overcome by.

I needed you to tell me to just breathe. That wasn’t your job, and yet I demanded it of you. I am sorry.

“We can do this, you guys,” I declare to no one in particular.

We all seem a little hesitant to attach the final black clamp to my dead car battery, which I see is covered in white, powdery corrosion. The man scrapes it off with his fingernail. I think about lawsuits.

The clamps are all attached and no one is dead. Good signs. He tells Sarah to start her car and let it run for a bit. She does. I thank him profusely for helping us.

After a minute or so he signals me to try starting my car. I hold my breath and pray it works. The car starts.

Thank you, thank you! I exclaim, feeling suddenly accomplished. Look! I got through this thing, and without panicking, I want to tell you.

“You should be all good to go,” he says, brushing off his hands as Sara removes the jumper cables from the cars. Her carpool has arrived. I want to text you that we fixed it — look what I did! But instead I hug Sarah again, and thank her for her generosity. I call many thanks to Mr. Smiley as he turns to leave.

He stops, and gestures to me.

“It suits you,” he says, as I get in my car.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Your name — Olivia. It suits you.”

And with that he walks away.

And although I may not feel alright, I smile, and I stop. In this moment I am me — I am Olivia. I am not angry. I am not jealous or anxious. I have solved a problem and done so calmly; I have thanked those who helped me, and acknowledged their effort. I have found the strength in me to tell myself that it will all be ok. I am the one who will tell myself to breathe. I am the one who will carry myself through moments of doubt and fear and uncertainty and dead car batteries. I am Olivia. And even if I will never be loved by you again, I will always be — Olivia.