I always thought that the worst heartache I’d ever endure would be at the hands of a stupid boy. I never imagined it would come from saying goodbye to my first car.

Life has a funny way of letting you say goodbye to someone before your time is up with them. There’s always a calm before the storm, where you can reflect on the time you spent together and how it’s changed you as a person, hopefully for the better.

My calm before the storm was on my way home from an eight-hour day of classes. I was done with class for the week and was walking back to the commuter parking lot with a huge smile on my face. It was beautiful out; the sun was high in the sky and the wind was picking up just enough to rustle some leaves but it was still a comfortable fall-into-winter temperature that meant I didn’t need a jacket until later that night.

I got into my 2001 Mustang and deposited my backpack on the passenger seat. I plugged my phone into the aux cable I had in my tape deck. I thumbed through a few playlists and tried to decide what I wanted to listen to on my twenty minute drive home.

When I was ready to leave the parking lot and get onto route 295, I put my sunglasses on and coasted out of the small parking space. Thank god for having a small car.

The true moment of reflection came to me when I was racing down the highway with my windows cracked and my music at full volume. Despite loving my car, I admit that I did want an upgraded version; my big girl Mustang--a little newer, black paint, black leather interior. But my car was still a true beauty in his silver glory. It was a GT clone, and it turned heads even at being almost 15 years old.

It was my first true love. I spent years begging my dad to let me get a Mustang. An American classic, American muscle! Every family outing I would stare out the window and point out every Mustang we passed. I had a knack for spotting Mustangs, and I still do. I drove my parents nuts. “You can’t even drive yet,” Dad would say.

It was just before my 16th birthday that my dad told me he had found a V6 for sale in Lumberton, at a reasonable price. It would need some fixing up, but that was fine since it would still be another year until I was able to get my license. No one had to ask me twice if I was sure I wanted a Mustang, I’d been firm on that decision for nearly three years.

I got my car before I even had my learner's permit, before I even got my license. It needed some body work and some love to make it really mine. There were long, loving hours spent in the garage holding flashlights, being under the hood and laying underneath of the car. Every moment was worth it.

See, I come from a car family. It’s sometimes hard for non-car people to understand the infatuation my family has for these four wheeled contraptions. In my house, we grew up around cars. We knew not to touch them without permission. We knew to never slam doors or use anything but the handle to open them. We grew up going to the racetrack. We watched our own father race.

Cars are just a part of us, which is why I think I was so infatuated with my old car. Sure, I knew it wouldn’t ever be a true classic like my father’s collection of cars, but it was mine and it was my first car. I still intended on keeping it forever. Even though since turning 19 I had plans on upgrading to a newer model, I never planned on selling my first baby just to get my next one.

So I was driving down that highway, and I was thinking to myself about how wonderful of a car that my Jimmy had been (Yep, we’re also the kind of people that named our cars). He’d been there for proms and dates and he never once gave out on me. He got me home safely before curfew, and even after curfew. He got me back and forth to school and work. He was reliable. I treated him with car washes and waxes. He was faithful through every new batch of music I discovered.

And before I knew it, I was home. I pulled into my driveway, backed into my designated spot, and I gave his dashboard an affectionate little pat. Jimmy was also incredibly fast. He kept me on my toes. He gave me little rushes of pure adrenaline.

I had no idea that in just a few hours, I would be saying goodbye to Jimmy and all of our memories. Our last memory together would be horrific and painful for me to remember.

I picked up my best friend and we drove to our usual little Thursday night spot. It was past ten. We were laughing. We didn’t even have the music playing. No one was on their phones. I wasn’t even speeding. She was recounting of her rakish boy troubles while I laughed and nodded in sympathy at the right parts.

We were still laughing when the Mazda hatchback plowed into the driver’s side, sending us spinning and crashing into the median. One minute you’re laughing, and the next you’re screaming.

“We’re okay, we’re okay!” I heard Julie distantly chanting this in my ear.

The moments in an accident move slow and muddled through your mind. The images behind the windshield blur into one huge storm, but they move slowly and your heart feels like it’s stopped because you’re not even sure if it’s real and that it’s happening.

When the car finally jerked to a stop, we both sat in our seats stunned. “Did I run a red-light?” I screamed, my hands still gripping the steering wheel, refusing to let go.

“No, the light was green! He made an illegal left!” Julie reassured me. “Are you okay? We’re okay. Okay, get out of the car.” She said frantically.

I watched her throw the door open and get out and I hurried to do the same. I gripped the door handle and pushed. “My door won’t open! Julie, my door won’t open!” My words came out in panicked little gasps.

I watched her run to my side and pull on the door. “Can you climb to the passenger side?” She shouted.

I nodded, grabbing my keys and phone while I struggled to climb over the center console and out the door. The cold air felt frigid against my hot skin as I stood in the middle of the highway. The cars behind us were stopped or slowly coasting by. I heard the sickening crunch of pieces of my car being run over. The hatchback was behind us in the intersection, the front end badly damaged. Its owner was circling the body, checking for the worst.

I walked to the median, which was haggardly torn up from Jimmy going up and down on the grass as we spun. Patches of greenery were torn up and chunks of mud were flung into the road.

I stared at my car.

The tears sprang to my eyes immediately. The entire driver’s side was caved in, in the perfect shape of what the front of a Mazda M6 looked like. My beautiful GT rims were scraped and beaten. Two tires were completely blown out. Chunks of grass stuck between the rubber and the metal. We’d been T-boned, but we were perfectly okay except for some bumps and bruises.

“My car.” I moaned to Julie. I couldn’t believe the sight before my eyes. “Look at my car!”

I knew rationally that everything was okay because Julie and I were okay, but my insides were a mixture of despair and anger. Who makes an illegal left on red into oncoming traffic? What idiot doesn’t ask the 20-something girls if they’re okay after he hits them?

I woke up the next morning hoping that it was a horrific nightmare. I got out of bed and did my daily wakeup routine. I let the dogs out and checked the driveway to see if Jimmy was back in his spot by the fence. A lump formed in my throat as I realized that my car was slowly rotting away in some junkyard waiting for me to pick up its mangled body.

It’s now sitting at the base of my driveway, a tarp covering the exposed window and the worst of its damages. At first glance, the car looks nearly perfect despite the two blown out tires. Lifting the tarp, the car is a mass of mangled metal. It hurts to look at him. It causes me physical ache and terrible pain. Eventually, the offending man’s insurance company will come to pick him up and haul it to a junkyard where Jimmy will lay in a heap and maybe people will try to scrap his viable parts for their own Mustang.

My heartbreak is even worse now that I am Mustang-less in what now seems a Mustang-filled world, at least in the lower half of New Jersey. Like I said, I could always spot Mustangs wherever I went, but now everywhere I go there’s always several Mustangs directly in my line of vision. The gym, the grocery store, waiting at a red light, mall parking lots…they’re just everywhere, and none of them are mine.