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I am lucky: I grew up with a mother who suffered, still sometimes suffers, from Depression.
No really; I am. Lucky.
I hate that she must battle this demon; I hate her pain. But it's hers. As much as I'd like to make it all better when she is sick, I can't. Just as I cannot feel it as acutely as she does. I shouldn't feel lucky (because it sounds perverse). And I oughtn't, feel lucky, because my experience apparently doesn't bode well for me.
I no longer have to live with the looming prospect that Depression may descend because the prognosis was written in the tangled messages of my DNA: Depression, isn't, eminent scientists conclude, an inherent condition after all. I'd have heaved a sigh of relief had I not dismissed the theory all along: that I could get it from my mother. Wouldn't you have? Especially if your grandmother suffered too? Who wants to live in dread of developing a condition they've watched compromise the life of somebody they love to the point of flat-lining inertia and hopelessness. (Though I do wish I'd inherited her cheek bones and her long legs.)
So. That's it then. I'm not a blue-gened girl. But I could still, the experts warn, be susceptible. Depression is contagious, they say. Not like a cold, the flu: you don't get it by shaking hands with somebody whose life is reduced to a damp, black void. Not like that. It's infectious the way a mood is, the way laughter can be. It is learned through exposure, not transmitted with a sneeze or a kiss. And if you grew up with a parent who suffered from Depression, I read, you are three times more likely to succumb yourself. Three times!
My cleared gene pool is muddied: the odds against me stack up all over again.
I hear what the good doctors say. But I don't have to listen. (Would you?)
Couldn't my proximity to the illness have inoculated me against it? Won't my understanding of how and why it rears its black-dog-ugly-head (Depression's a bitch) in Mum help me to tiptoe carefully around the monster so that I do not wake it and find myself trapped shut in its swallowing jaws? Won't knowing what Depression (which always has a presence) looks like help me to avoid it? (Besides, how do you sidestep the bore at a party, the bully in the office unless you can identify them with confident accuracy?) Oh. I'm not complacent. I know complacency is the worst kind of prophylaxis. But I'm glass half full. And that's a good start.
Paradoxically, I believe it is exactly my exposure that may protect me from an illness that blights the lives of almost fifteen million Americans. Partly because I have to. (The alternative - anticipating it - would be too hard). Largely because Mum allowed me to. She described the manifestation - and machinations - of her illness in language that was devoid of frightening jargon, in normal words. Which was appropriate; as it turned out Mum's particular madness has - ironically - become a part of her normality.
But mostly because when she first got sick, when I was 13, and was admitted to the big white psych ward of a hospital scented by nerves, antiseptic and lunch, I stood by her bedside and tried not to be afraid when she described how electro-convulsive therapy was going to fix her sick mind. Falling to bits myself and climbing into bed with my pale mother whose pillow teased hair fanned about her head like an unhinged halo wasn't going to help. It didn't occur to me until years later that it may have been precisely that - the up close and personal exposure to the bare bones of the illness - which has lent a curious kind of shield.
‘'Do you have coping skills, Mum?'' asked my eldest daughter (as if I might whip them from my handbag so we could admire them). She was, at the time, the age I was when my mother first got sick.
‘'I think so''.
‘'When did you get yours?'' She wanted to know, and I stifled a smile at the thought of bidding for them on EBay. (How much would you pay for coping skills?)
‘'Probably about the time Gran got sick''.
She pondered my response briefly, ‘'so in a funny way'', she observed cautiously, ‘'Granny might have saved you from Depression''.
Yes, I think she might have.
