I just got off the phone with my daughter and I feel like such a failure, I really do. She’s studying for her finals, you know, senior year, everything is so important for college applications and she’s supposed to be out with her friends, going to parties and all that stuff, but she spends so much time talking me through things. Like tonight, I called her because her dad, my ex, he said something just really dismissive about my job and I just spiraled, completely, couldn’t get a handle on it. And she listened, really listened, for almost an hour, giving me advice that honestly, I probably should be giving her. She's talking about how I need to "stand up for myself" and "not let him get to me" and I’m sitting here thinking, how does she know this? How does she know so much more about how to handle adult relationships than I do, and she’s barely eighteen? It’s not fair to her, it just isn’t. I remember when she was younger, like middle school, she’d already be the one mediating arguments between me and her dad, even before the divorce. She’d say things like, "Mom, maybe he didn't mean it that way" or "Dad, you're making her feel bad." And I just let her, I guess, because it helped, it really did calm things down. But now, seeing her so stressed about school, about getting into a good university, and then she has to come home or I call her, and she has to be MY therapist or my life coach or whatever you call it these days. It makes me wonder what kind of life she’s actually having. What friendships is she missing out on because she’s on the phone with me, trying to fix my problems, problems I really should have figured out by now. I’m almost sixty, for god's sake. And it’s not just the ex stuff. It’s my friends, it’s my job, it’s just everything. I rely on her so much for emotional support that I don’t even know what I’d do without her. And that's the scary part, because she’s leaving for college in a few months, going to be hundreds of miles away, and I’m going to be completely alone with all this. What kind of mother am I? What kind of example have I set? I should be giving her strength, not draining hers. She needs to be thinking about her future, about being young and free, not about her mother's messed-up relationships. But I just don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to just… handle it myself.