tortured metaphors aside, day eighteen was an interesting one. i prepared my last math talk ever, went to my last non-me math talk ever, and gave my last math talk ever (these are all likelies, of course, not definites.) and after my talk, lindsay came up to me with this grin on her face and said that it was the first math talk she'd been to where she actually understood everything. which was really cool -- to know that even in my parting shot, i had some impact on somebody's life. i like it when i make people happy.
i'm a good speaker and a good mathematician, and so i guess in some sense it's selfish for me to leave, but i honestly think that being unhappy would have torpedoed at least the second of those, so i don't feel too bad about it (and i'm not a very guilt-ridden person in general either.)
then i had dinner with ali, and to be honest i was sort of relieved when she had to bail early, not because i didn't enjoy the dinner (it was great to see her and catch up, as always), but because i had been sleepwalking through the day and i just wanted to crash. of course, this plan was derailed when my mother and i somehow got into a huge argument during which she again called me hopelessly fat and hopelessly unmarriageable (which is funny, because the only reason she has for that is that i have this incredibly contentious relationship with her, which translates into i can't take criticism -- but since she levels so much of it at me, you can see why it's hard to take from her! but no need to rant about my mother too much.)
somehow this tailspin ended and we followed it with an actually nice conversation, in which she said that she thinks i've really learned a lot about relationships and am in really good position to find someone.
i don't get my mother sometimes. day eighteen.