My life is very sad right now. I refuse to pretend to be happy for all those people who can't handle me sad or heaven forbid, negative. I am really putting a damper on all those positive thinking people. I did not realize until recently that the power of positive thinking proselytizers need to go around exhibiting how positive they are while rounding up all those evil negative ones and branding those bad sad people with a big minus sign.

The plus, all positive perfect people meanwhile are saying, "Hey, look at this bad negative person, so sad and hopeless because they have not been saved by the power of positive thinking like me." Our culture seems to really be in a severe dichotomous comparative analysis mode that I believe is spurred on by our bipolar, er um, bipartisan mania. Whatever happened to diversity?

Is it really positive to single out people in pain, grief or struggling and scrutinize or demand that they mend the error of their ways? Do I have to live my whole life validating others? I spent my childhood trying to satisfy others and then my younger adulthood trying to raise a child to be happy and accepting of herself so that she could be a happier child and adult than me. I sometimes wonder if I would have been more like my daughter if I had been raised by a parent like me.

If I appear to be patting myself on the back for raising a happy healthy daughter who is successful at a young age, please humor me. I find the fact of my parenting triumph quite ironic. I reflect on my life and this parenting achievement seems to be the only true success in my life I can strongly identify even though I consider myself a feminist. My daughter's middle name is Simone, after Simone de Beauvoir.

In May of this year, my daughter graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. She was only a day trip away. Now my daughter is many miles away in North Carolina where she is starting her engineering career. I am happy for my daughter but sad for me.

My daughter's life makes me happy but I miss her. I am also attempting to accept my mother's impending death and deal with a family that does not come together in times of crisis. Unfortunately, I know how my family is in times of crisis because my brother was killed in a plane crash when he was only 31. I know death and my family. I am not quite sure why I expected much different now but I'm managing with what is left of a family that is loathe to comfort any member who exhibits weakness or expresses sadness or any true emotion.

Death has not touched my daughter yet and she does not know what to say to me. I understand. I don't call her to express my sadness and am glad that she is blissfully ignorant of death. I am grateful she will never have to attempt to untangle a vast array of thoughts and feelings when I die including regret and a lack of resolve for a mother-daughter relationship that could have been but wasn't because my mother feared being open, loving and close.

My daughter and I are open, loving and close with each other. I don't want to imagine a world without my daughter. I am having enough trouble being a good mommy and putting the brave face on with her so far away. I like the fact that her boyfriend is with her but he may be coming back north at the end of the summer to finish grad school.

If I can't be there to care for my daughter, I have been thrilled that a man like her boyfriend has been there for the last 2 years to care for her. I was on my own at her age but for some reason, I am not good at getting a grip that she may be totally on her own many miles away come this fall.

You can imagine my dismay this morning when I checked her boyfriend's facebook page to see that there had been a bomb scare yesterday, a mile away from where they live and she works. My second thought was, "OK, they must be alright because he is posting on facebook."

Hey, so at least my second thought was positive!