I never know when you’re being serious.

Sadly enough, neither do I!

Screw the car itself, it's not the complaint here at all... I totally could afford the car. That was not the point... ... the point was the jinx the supposedly nice car brought into my entire life. It was supposed to get some comfort in mid-life after you have worked hard 30 years to build your decent life. Instead the whole life it was supposed to spruce up went down the pan and it took me 8 years to get back on the horse. Ironically to finally "get on the horse 100%" I had to sell the very car it all started with. And on the horse I was immediately. Back to square 1, lots of tribulations, but "invaluable life experience" where it was supposed to be time to reap and enjoy what you've carefully sown.

... And drove to JobCentre Plus for weekly appointments. The irony is that its employees never saw it either, I parked in the town centre where they allowed an hour for free...

I think I've got them straight. I had to stay at home while caring about my depressed wife and the new baby. Being mom and dad altogether. Her depression came with the diagnosis. After you spend 10 months on the bench, your employability goes seriously down the pan. Thanks for the comment, it probably feels really good to teach people life lessons they have (as you think) deserved.

Surely the child's health is a priority. Otherwise I wouldn't have spent 10 months on the bench caring about him when it was needed the most (wife was unable to do anything except lie down entire days and cry, cry and cry again). It just felt extremely unfair that where some people get to reap what they sown, I had to sow, sow, and sow again. Makes you angry, y'know.

No. I'm not even complaining at all, neither I needed commiseration, tbh. I wanted to share the Irony of Fate as it works in real life. That's the FML's point, isn't it? My header to this FML would be "Man's Heart Plans, But God Decides". “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). Here is how the letter of James explains it: 13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” P.S. I'm not a devout Christian, but these words just illustrate this FML better than I ever could.

After 10 months caring for the newborn with the diagnosis (life-long condition) plus the depressed to the bottom wife (who before that, nearly died giving birth, losing 60% of her blood, then lost her best friend of 20+ years to stroke, then her child, which we spent huge effort and money to get born, had this diagnosis). When you are approaching 50 and you had 10 months off the horse, it is incredibly difficult to jump back into the saddle. Just so you don't think I sat there on my thumbs and cried about being unable to use my Merc.