The Day Mom Cut My Last Lifeline

For years, a mother has insisted that depression is nothing more than an illness born of idleness, and that a daughter busy with mock exams has no time to wallow. Through sleepless nights and clumps of falling hair, the girl keeps her head down, while relatives ask why she has grown so quiet and her homeroom teacher calls to say she no longer seems like herself.

Only after she collapses before a mock exam does a doctor's advice bring home a tiny orange tabby, Tangy, who becomes her one reason to keep going. When she returns from college for the holiday and calls for him, the cat bed is gone; her mother says she dumped him back where she found him. As the girl runs outside, her parents drag her back, and the neighbors watch a scene recast as a daughter's psychotic episode.

At a family gathering, the welts on her back still sting, and every relative's praise for other children's futures only sharpens the question of what is left for her.