Augh - I can get all these aspects of my life in order, but I cannot impact the limits I've got in terms of offering my daughter more from life right now. I've already sacrificed everything I can in order to give her a better life than I had. I have NO footing - her father has become his own father (a machiavellian prince and an ogre - like our worst nightmare) because of life-nonsense I have no control over, and it's just so hard to be her mother every day and have nothing to offer her beyond what I can scrape together at this point. And I have ONE conversation with ONE mother today so that I might be able to use her as a job reference, and she just went on and on and on and every single sentence was SO hurtful and inappropriate (she has a crush on my ex-husband, who's left us here completely alone) and she starting asking all sorts of questions in this RAPID FIRE series about him, and I had to like SHAKE my head and pull my assertiveness skills together and politely change the subject over and over and finally I just had to lie about having to go and hang up - and I have completely withdrawn so as not to get caught up in these parents' nonsense (what this woman did is the least offensive thing they do - you just would not believe their behavior and their values). She was the lead in a play and she just BLEW everyone away - she's freakishly talented, and someone told her about Interlochen after seeing her in this play, and she came home and showed me this video of the place, and I cannot move again in order to accommodate getting her there, and sometimes I think to myself: "It's so impossible right now to squeeze life out of my own life - it doesn't even matter. I might as well give up all my furniture and live like a hermit in some efficiency apartment in Michigan so she can have the future I thought she'd have when she was born. This place is squeezing every drop of life from us". I'm sorry - I try so hard to be positive, and being positive makes a HUGE difference, but when I'm too exhausted to forge my way thru life, I'm right back staring at a huge load of helplessness. I'm pushing myself to write this, as I really need some input from people who are kind - whatever input (PLEASE - AS LONG AS IT'S SUPPORTIVE) would be SO much appreciated. My god it gets difficult sometimes. She's such an amazing person (my daughter) but I can't keep this life from closing in on us. I cannot control it all (or compensate for it all) - other people's idiotic value systems (mostly my ex and his family) and the GRENADES they lob into our lives.