I just found out that Adam will be playing in San Francisco this summer, on my very own birthday. I'd been hoping for this ever since I saw that he was going to be touring the Bay Area in late July.

I wish I could be happy about this. But all I feel is hopelessness. All of this wishing and wanting is so futile. I'll never have this, this thing I want so badly.

It may seem trivial in anyone else's eyes, but it means everything to me. There's this deeper layer behind it all which weighs me down- my insecurities about how I appear to my family, how I don't tell them about Adam, how I feel like I don't belong to them sometimes, that's just how different I am. It's not just a simple question of, Will I ask to go or not?

Maybe it's all my own fault. Maybe if I'd been open about this with everyone from the start, my mom would understand why I want this so much. She would make sure this happened for me.

But maybe she wouldn't, even if she did know. Just because that's how this family is. Intolerable of something as silly as a pop concert.

Yet maybe she would agree for my sake, and I could bring my friend along and dance all night and be my utterly giddy teenage self without being self-conscious.

What if my mom as more willing to indulge my silliness? If she didn't make those little remarks each time I let the slightest bit of it show? If she didn't have to say "You're still after him?" when I ask to order his deluxe album, or act completely shocked whenever she sees that I've recorded a performance of his.

But maybe if she knew how much he means to me, she would understand...

I wonder, did my mom ever go cuckoo over some singer when she was a teen? I doubt it. I'm similar to my mom in a lot of ways, but I can't fathom her ever letting herself go like that.

~

I want this so f***ing much. When I was hoping for it all before, I told myself, "Look, if it's really on my birthday, that would be incredibly auspicious, it would be a sign. I would have to go for it."

But now, here I am, and my dream doesn't feel any more within my grasp than before. I've got a friend to take, but I haven't a single adult that cares about Adam. No in the slightest.

Here's what would happen next, in my ideal world: I would carefully select a handful of songs and videos that would appeal to my mother, who has yet to see a single performance by him. I would show them to her, let her mull it over for a while. She would see another side of me, a side she can't like or dislike but only accept because I'm her daughter. She would say absolutely nothing, just try to absorb this man, Adam, and understand the effect he has on me.

Then I would sit down with her and tell her just how much I want this. For the first time, we would have a conversation about the most influential man in my life. When I've told her it all, she would know this other half of me. And she would say yes, I can go to this concert. Not as some kind of special birthday indulgence, a one-time throwaway, but as the only thing I've ever really wanted. She would let me simply because it would mean the world to me to see Adam, to hear him, to feel him sing.

That is my dream. Yet I doubt that I will ever have the guts to make it happen.