This story is shared by a Reddit user u/Jeriath27
This is my story about how the Cybertruck has already saved a life (or more accurately saved one almost immediately after it was revealed.
The story starts a little over a year ago; when we took delivery of our Model 3. I had been following Tesla for year and was 20th in line to reserve a Model 3 three years prior, but circumstances prevented us from getting it when we first got our email. Well on April 1st 2019 we were finally able to justify the down payment with a new job and a long daily commute for taking the kids to school and we picked up our car. My wife, while skeptical at the time, thought it was a good choice just given the gas savings (we were spending >$400/month in gas). She wasn’t so sure she would like the car, especially given that she would be the one driving it 95% of the time. Well, lo and behold, she loved it. It didn’t have as many technical issues that she thought it would have given the technology in it and she got to the point where she hated having to drive our other vehicle. The Model 3 just made her daily commute so much easier and she never had to deal with stopping for gas, let alone doing it twice a week or more.
Flash forward 3 months. My wife has been loving the car and has even been using it to do Uber/Lyft to make some extra money. She didn’t do this often as she has never liked being around strangers and gets bad anxiety, but occasionally she would get in the mood to do some driving on the weekends or after dropping the kids off at school. Then summer hits…..
My wife’s anxiety and stranger issues stem from her PTSD. She was abused physically and mentally for 11 years as a child at the hands of her stepfather while her mother stood by and did nothing. Even married the man AFTER my wife finally got out of the house, which didn’t make things better. Normally I can help her through her episodes but this time she was visiting a friend in another state when the episode hit and it was a bad one. Long story short, she ended up in a hospital and we had to fight the court to get her out. In the meantime she was pumped full of so much medicine that it completed f’ed any mental control she had. They gave her stuff I told them not to that sent her into cluster seizures and something that gave her extremely vivid nightmares for months. Thankfully we got her out within a week and I was able to get her back home, but she wasn’t the same person. We visited some local hospitals and found a local therapy place to try and help her but she had fallen into an extremely deep depression. For months I worried that every day may be the last day she was here and I did everything to remind her of what she had and try and bring her back. Her doctor worked with us to play with some medicine to at least stabilize her mood swings which were uncontrollable the entire time, but it wasn’t a fast process and at least 3-4 times a week she would have terrible meltdowns.
After about 4 months we were able to get her medicine mostly figured out while she continued to go to weekly therapy sessions and she was at least somewhat stable. She only had issues maybe once per week, but was still in a very deep depression and I continued to worry every day that something could go wrong and I would lose her.
November 21st, 2019……..
My wife as sleeping. She spent most of her time sleeping when I was home. That was her usual when she was in a depressions, but it was better than the alternative sometimes. I had gotten the kids to bed and was playing some games while waiting for the Cybertruck reveal. My wife knew we were planning to get the truck even before the reveal, but didn’t really care. She knew a truck would be much more useful and would get us on all Tesla vehicles, but she really wanted an x even though we couldn’t afford it in the configuration we would need for traveling. I knew the truck was going to be a controversial design and sure enough when I saw it I wasn’t super impressed. I thought the design was interesting but wasn’t immediately something that I was drawn too. I thought it was neat but it wasn’t something amazing. Nonetheless, the next morning I decided to show my wife while we were lying in bed, but not quite ready to get up.
Cue the awakening…..
When my wife saw the truck come out, she was stunned; she absolutely loved the design! I don’t know why; I don’t think she knew why, but she fell in love with the truck. She no longer wanted the X, she wanted our next car to be the Cybertruck. She spent the next several hours watching and re-watching the reveal video and looking at every detail of the truck. Seeing how she reacted to it, I realized an opportunity and went downstairs to put in our reservation for the truck. I printed out the email and showed it to her and she was ecstatic for the first time in 4 months. It was like the old her came back out for the first time. I told her she needed to help save for it and she jumped at the opportunity. She put together charts and motivational pictures and started driving for Uber again with our 3. She has completely changed since that moment she saw the truck and is back to her old self. She has been saving money so we can get the truck as soon as our name comes up and has has a complete turnaround form constant depression to excited giddiness since that day in November. She has been following everything that comes out about the truck, has replaced her favorite hat with a Tesla hat, and gets into excited conversations about the truck with other Tesla owners when we are charging (took a trip across country since the reveal).
This past 9 months has been an amazing time for us as she’s gotten back to her old self and she’s been working hard to save as much as possible. We’ve had some setbacks (corona, our 3 getting totaled (just replaced with a y)), but still have saved up a good amount and vie since had a good pay increase so I am helping her by sending money every paycheck into the savings account. All I can say is “Thank You Tesla”. The Cybertruck probably saved my wife’s life, our family, and my sanity.
