We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.

by Samantha Irby

I was born to one of those mythical black hero women, a single mother who somehow managed to graduate both high school and a nursing program despite having had her first child at sixteen, a woman I never saw pop a pill or take a drink or bury her head under a pillow for three days at a time. Every single time I just can’t…get…up I beat myself up a little, because it’s not like I have children or a job I hate and there’s probably nothing the matter with me other than laziness. When I was growing up, no one in my house was talking about depression. That’s something that happened to white people on television, not a thing that could take down a Strong Black Woman. Which also destroyed me on the “Why are you listening to Smashing Pumpkins instead of [insert name of popular early nineties R & B artist]? Are you even black?!” level. So I was (1) super fucking depressed, (2) super fucking depressed with no one to talk to about it who wasn’t going to immediately suggest child services remove me from my home, and (3) super fucking depressed while clocking in on the low end of my skinfolk’s negrometers because I identified hard with Courtney Love and read Sassy magazine because Essence wasn’t really speaking to me yet, so wasn’t this whole thing yet another way I was desperately trying to be white?! When I was young I was frequently described as “moody.” Or dismissed as “angry.” According to the social worker who routinely pulled me out of class, I was intellectually bright but “qui...