Depression

We have no control over our genetic history.  For the most part, whether we're short or tall, brunette or blond, it's just a crapshoot followed by acceptance (and maybe an expensive trip to the salon).  But how about the life-altering DNA that we can't get away from?

Some unlucky folks inherit Huntington's Disease or the breast cancer gene... me:  I get depressed.

Thankfully, my DNA mixture is ten times better than my mother's (diagnosed bi-polar, suicide attempts, one short institutionalization) and a hundred times better than my grandmother's (many teenage years locked in her family's basement while she sobbed, a long institutionalization that included shock treatment and total hair loss and a final diagnosis of manic-depression). Whether my depression is lessened due to the diluting of the genetic pool or as a result of better treatment and meds, it's still a struggle for me.

I regularly find myself weeping into my tea with some existential sense of lonliness and despair that I can immediately identify as irrational.  What to do?  Therapy, exercise, medicate (although I am SUCH a cliche as I regularly decide to "forget" to take my meds and then wonder why I am having an anxiety attack - duh?!!), but in the end, it's a chronic disease and there is no cure, so I have to manage it as best I can and try like hell to mitigate it's effects on those I love.

Depression is depressing.  I dread the thought of continuing to deal with it for the rest of my life.  After my Grandfather's death when my grandparents were in their 80's, Grandma stopped taking her lifelong medication and her last years were a roller coaster (turns out, Grandpa made her take her "happy pills" every day of their long marriage after he got a taste of her disease in their early marital life), but you can't fight (well, win against) your chromosomes.  I guess that you "normal" people should protect your genetic pool, but with 10% of Americans taking anti-depressants, good luck.