I need to get this computer off me, she says. I can’t tell if I’m sick or depressed.
Depressed is sick, I tell her, but she says there’s a difference. She would know. Her mom, and her mom’s mom, and the moms before them, all swirled out into that inaccessible distance.
One killed herself.
One got committed and clothed in a buttermilk dress.
The rest toiled on amid children and husbands, saying everything’s F-I-N-E fine.
They repeat it like a mantra.
They wield it like a shield and a curse.
Jenn Hall 