Recall Alert: Why My Totaled Ford Fixed What Was Really Broken

Captured by Mitchell Royel

This moment—this entire journey from Fiesta to footsteps—exists because someone chose to document it. Mitchell Royel captured what words alone couldn't convey: the transformation that happens when everything you relied on gets stripped away. The lens doesn't lie. It reveals the truth beneath the surface, the resilience that emerges when comfort disappears. And now, as EDX's "Off The Grid" plays, the soundtrack feels inevitable—a perfect accompaniment to a life that stopped following the prescribed route and started forging its own path. Sometimes you don't choose to go off the grid. Sometimes the grid chooses to let you go, and that's when the real journey begins.

My first car was a Ford Fiesta—purchased during my tenure at an athleisure retailer, where certain colleagues once drew comparisons between my demeanor and Brittany Norwood's. I dismissed the observation then. The Fiesta wasn't remarkable, but it served its purpose with quiet reliability.

Before my Urban Outfitters chapter began, I transitioned to a Ford EcoSport. A modest upgrade, certainly, but it represented progress—tangible evidence of forward momentum. That vehicle accompanied me through my Erewhon employment, witnessing the accelerated pace at which circumstances transform.

Then came the rainy evening that fractured my trajectory. A vehicle operating without headlights struck mine during a left turn—a moment of impact that shattered more than metal and glass. Something fundamental broke within me. The desire to drive simply evaporated.

I began walking everywhere instead.

What started as avoidance transformed into revelation. Walking became my discipline, my meditation, my constant when stability proved elusive elsewhere. I fell in love with the rhythm of it—the deliberate pace, the unmediated connection to my surroundings.

Something about that accident still doesn't align properly in my mind. The circumstances felt orchestrated, somehow. Perhaps my schizoaffective disorder colors this perception—I acknowledge that possibility. The line between legitimate suspicion and manufactured pattern recognition isn't always clear.

But here's the truth that matters: that collision redirected me toward something better. Personal transformation rarely arrives through comfortable circumstances—it emerges from disruption, from moments that force recalibration. I didn't recognize the gift immediately, but adversity has a way of revealing paths we wouldn't have chosen consciously.

That accident didn't defeat me. It refined me.

-Mitchell