One day you step into the yard, your car stares at you with its headlights, and you’re like: “Who even are you?
Why are you here, like a refrigerator, but without food and without cold beer?”
No, you don’t hate it. You’re just standing there with the keys, like an editor with nothing to edit, and you feel the absurdity: your iron friend is a chunky yard artifact. Sharp revelations usually happen in three locations: the gas station, the service shop, and a traffic jam.
The holy trinity for a masochist on wheels.
You shuffle around at the pump, reading the price tag like stock-market disaster news, and every 10 hryvnias feels like a slap to the wallet. It’s no longer “full tank,” it’s “until I pay in blood.”
Self-esteem goes negative, maturity melts away, and you seem to have evolved unsuccessfully into a creature for whom living hurts.
Next: the service shop.
You’re “just changing the oil,” yeah right. That “just” is a magic word—after it, your money puts on sneakers and runs off into the sunset. The mechanic whispers, “just minor stuff,” and scary creatures crawl out of thin air: bushings, control arms, mounts, “it’s leaking a bit, but not fatal.” You don’t argue. You’ve already been broken. Mentally.
And then—a traffic jam. You stand there for 40 minutes to teleport 500 meters. In that moment you’re burning fuel, nerves, and a few years of your life just to… stand still. That’s not mobility. That’s urban torture.
And then suddenly: you do have a car, but instead of freedom it feels like your own Ford is keeping you on a leash. Most of the time your car just sits there, covered in leafy mythology, sometimes under a fine, sometimes in the company of pigeons. You insure it. You start it “so the battery won’t die.” All these rituals for two trips a week and one parking headache.
You’re not keeping a car—you’re keeping a very expensive yard arboretum. At the same time you call a taxi, because it’s faster, easier, and you don’t have to think where to dump your ship of despair. And that’s where the financial fracture hits: you pay for a personal car so you can pay for someone else’s.
Welcome to pocket-sized “Fight Club.”
A sudden philosophical question: do you even have to be the clown in this circus?
If you need a car once in a blue moon, if your city hates you back, if driving isn’t fun but an endurance survival sport—maybe the problem isn’t you. Maybe the problem is the very fact of ownership.
For some reason we’ve been sold this idea: either you have your own car, or you’re some license-less space wanderer.
But there’s a third way: don’t own—use!
Not always, not forever—only when the little lights inside are on.
Go see your grandma. Pick up a wardrobe. Lose the metro for a week.
No service shop. No “minor stuff.” No check engines, no sponsoring someone’s garage.
As ad-free as possible, just info: if you want that—check CAR2DRIVE: https://car2drive.ua
Here you’re not paying for iron pain—you’re paying for the days when you actually need a friend on wheels.
A subscription, but without obligations and nerves.
The conclusion is as banal as rain in a parking lot: you don’t owe a car anything.
It’s not a test of adulthood, not a stamp of success. It’s just a metal object.
If your car makes you happy—high five. If you’re asking more and more often, “why do I need all this?”—congrats, you’re not weird. We just live in a city where an automobilist’s happiness is an urban legend.
And sometimes the best upgrade isn’t buying a new one—it’s letting the old one go.