Diva-licious Mariah Carey talks about her struggle with fame, being called a “diva” and reconciling with her father in the new issue of Parade, out Sunday.

On showing her emotions easily and being eager to please: “My self-esteem has never been topping the charts. You don’t know who is here for the glamour, for the gossip factor. You really just want to know that somebody loves you for you. That’s a difficult thing when, you know… (pauses) Sometimes you just do really feel like an ATM machine with a wig on it.”

On her mother Patricia Hickey: “I must give my mother credit for really inspiring and encouraging me to sing. She was an opera singer and went to Juilliard. She still sings and was a classically trained musician. I’m not a technical person, so I went the other way and got into R&B because I can just do whatever and sing whatever comes to mind. But she instilled the belief in me that I could become who I am today. She tells a story about when she was rehearsing a part of the opera Rigoletto, and I stopped her and said, ‘No, you made a mistake, it goes like this,’ and sang it back to her in another language at 4 years old. So my mother thought, ‘Okay, she has an ear.’”

On Getting Older:”I’m eternally 12. And that 12-year-old inside me is an eternal optimist. I know what it feels like not to have fame or money, and I do still feel like that same person in many ways. Honestly, I don’t even have birthdays. I call them ‘anniversaries.’ It really is about being as young as you feel. Some people convince themselves they’re old, or they think, ‘I have to grow up now; I can’t have fun.’ I will still always choose a day at Disney World over a night in Las Vegas, because that’s who I am. ”

On Her “Breakdown”:“How do you climb back from the shambles when everybody counts you out? That can be a very difficult thing to come to terms with, especially when you’ve had so much success from such an early age. I have such faith in God that I really had to surrender everything and just know that I was going to be okay. That’s truly where I had to go to when it felt like the bottom. More than anything, it was learning to grow up and take care of myself. Not treat myself like the corporation wanted to treat me, but treat myself like a human being. I’ve faced my worst fears and come out of them okay. Everything is always going to be all right as long as I hang on to the person inside of me. ”

Read the full interview here.

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