Feeling: unbalanced
Listening to: Blue October - Amazing
Reading/Watching: Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel

I called my mother just to tell her I'd e-mailed her more pictures of wedding dresses (I think the shine has gone off the idea for her; it is now an unreasonably large chunk of change for a single garment that could be spent on a year's worth of groceries), and started telling her about all that's been happening lately, and I don't know exactly why I wound up sobbing and saying "I don't know what to do," but there it was.

Dr. Troxler, my mentor/voice teacher for the past five years, is dead. Cancer wins. Her funeral is on Tuesday. I had to reschedule a voice lesson for it, and for some reason the idea of teaching my students puts a bad taste in my mouth, a sense of wrongness, because the woman who taught me everything isn't here to see it. I listened to a single song from my senior recital, and teared up, because I could remember watching her face while I was singing it.

So I'm blubbering about this to my mom. That, and the money situation. And the totaled car situation. And mon coeur's fractured-ribs situation. And the job situation. And the fact that I am a big baby who can't handle adult life and on top of that, look at me, I like to whine.

So I'm crying into the phone, saying I feel like a fraud and a failure, saying I can't help anyone, least of all the man I'm going to marry, who slips into frustration or depression whenever any of the aforementioned subjects come up.

My mother told me to work on my book. Not to hunt harder for jobs, or pester temp agencies, or how I couldn't live off of teaching students (because I kind of have been), but she told me to do something that made me feel useful. Something that made me feel competent, and intelligent, and like I hadn't gone to school for nothing. And she told me it wasn't a waste of time, because it had a chance of being something someday, whether it reaped its rewards now or in five years.

Then Dad got on the phone and said wonderful things about mon coeur being in the family now, and that if he needs help, whether it's advice, help with car shopping, or a small loan, it's just as available to him as it is to me. And that made me cry a little bit more.

It's comforting to know that even my own parents can surprise me sometimes. I like surprises.

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