Almost.

I don't usually pay much attention to my horoscope, but I was led to this one in sort of a weird way, and it's pretty damn uncanny.

ARIES [March 21–April 19] I don't think I'm being unduly optimistic when I say that you're on the verge of achieving a victory over your bad self. You have been dealing more forthrightly with the lowest aspects of your character and have also become aware of the difference between your out-and-out unregenerate qualities and the unripe aspects of your character that may someday become very beautiful. There's a second sign that you're close to transforming one of the most negative things about you: You have almost figured out the truth about a murky curse that you internalized some time ago. When you identify it, you will know how to banish it forever.

Oh, the look on my face when I read this horoscope. I think I'm going to have to subscribe to this zodiac guy (Rob Breszney). You don't have to know me well to know that I've been battling some demons lately. Let's break it down, shall we?

I don't think I'm being unduly optimistic when I say that you're on the verge of achieving a victory over your bad self.

True. After a bit of soul-searching, discussion, and some hormone shifts, I am feeling a lot better about things.

You have been dealing more forthrightly with the lowest aspects of your character and have also become aware of the difference between your out-and-out unregenerate qualities and the unripe aspects of your character that may someday become very beautiful.

What are the lowest aspects of my character? I suppose this hearkens back to my little essay about my dad, that whole Edwards why-am-I-worth-the-space-I-take-up thing. It's so easy for me to feel very bad about myself, not so much in a self-pitying way, but in a self-berating way. I start feeling useless. And to sum up, I often feel like I'm not making my parents proud, which is one of my biggest motivations in life. I don't know if that's a good motivation to have or not.

Anyway, one of my worst character flaws is that I tend not just to feel like I'm not worthy of my parents' pride, but to feel that I will never and can never be worthy of it. Total uselessness. Total despair.

Moving on to unripe aspects. I hope and pray that I will someday become the woman I'm forever striving to be. Someone successful, secure, happy. Someone worth being proud of. Someone who can tackle things with confidence. And I'm starting to see that a little bit, as far as my job goes. I'm forced to deal with strangers, so that's getting easier. And as I teach more lessons, I'm becoming more confident in myself as a tutor. I can be good at this.

There's a second sign that you're close to transforming one of the most negative things about you: You have almost figured out the truth about a murky curse that you internalized some time ago. When you identify it, you will know how to banish it forever.

That "almost" is a key word here. And I am figuring it out. The more I read books and forums and articles about parenting, the more I think about how I was raised, and how I'm going to do things differently.

I have always felt that my parents did a very good job, and my relationship with them is great. But they weren't perfect; no parents are. I was an extremely sensitive child, and very shy. I only realized this fully when I worked at the after-school program, and realized that no child there, no matter how shy, was as painfully shy as I was as a kid. I found it humiliating to talk to strangers. I turned bright red at the drop of a hat. I was so sensitive to the anger and disappointment of my parents that I'm kind of surprised they ever really had to punish me. My little sister was the button-pusher in the family, and made my parents (especially my dad) angry with no fear. Meanwhile I walked on eggshells to avoid making waves of any kind.

(And here I'm sure my sister will remind me that we did fight with each other, and that obviously made our parents angry, and I most certainly initiated most of those fights. I won't deny that I did my utmost to piss off my sister, which is what I was punished for 90% of the time I had to be punished.)

I was such a sensitive child that I couldn't take a joke or a tease or an off-color comment lightly. I remember just about every negative thing my parents ever said to me, stuff that they've long forgotten.

I remember when my sister was a baby and crying a lot, as babies do, and I said to my mom, "Don't you wish you'd never had her?" (What? I was FOUR.) And she said, "Maybe I wish I'd never had you." This sent me into a fountain of tears, instantly. Probably not the most sensitive thing she could've said to me, but in retrospect she was trying to say "That's not nice, Miranda. What if someone said something like that to you?" What I heard, very clearly, was: "I wish I'd never had you." Years later, when I was still a kid, I reminded my mom of this incident and she said she didn't remember it, and would never have said that to me. But it's burned into my memory.

I cried a lot as a kid. Bedtime was often a source of tears, because I would lay in bed thinking about things, and end up mulling over something that upset me. (I've always been a poor sleeper; as far back as I can remember, it has always taken me an hour or more to fall asleep after going to bed.)

Once when I was a second-grader, I came out to the living room long after bedtime, in tears, and wailed to my parents that I had no best friend. All my friends seemed paired up with each other, and I was the odd one out. My dad, frustrated from many nights in a row of me coming out to the living room with sob-stories, made the grumpy retort: "Oh Miranda, why are you always thinking about things?" Again, the insensitive response of a tired parent, which I understand now that I'm an adult. At the time, I heard "I don't care about your problems, and you've made me angry by bringing them up." Again, etched into my memory forever.

These slips made by my parents were the exception, not the rule, of their parenting. On the whole they were very loving, supportive, everything good parents should be. But it just goes to show how much of an impact words can have on a sensitive child.

It's a lesson for me as a parent. My goal with Téa is to help her to be a more secure child than I was, and a more confident woman than I am.