People that try to tell me my depression is my own fault tend to get slapped with a nice backhand. My family on both sides has three generations plus of documented chronic depression and it *is* genetically passed down. I couldn't escape it if I wanted to, I can only make the best of it and point fingers at the airheads that never stop smiling and say they're worse. I quite honestly believe that without my depression making me harder and more cynical I wouldn't be alive because I wouldn't be able to buckle down when the road gets rough. It's entirely because I've had to become nastier to fight the depression that I have the ability to eat plain rice for weeks at a time because that's all that's there and be able to not care well enough I don't get sick--or the cold "it's me or you" attitude when it comes to animals and other people. I see a pigeon in my back yard and I'm hungry? Guess what, I'm eating pigeon with no remorse.
Of course, it also makes me a miserable person to be around because I carry that attitude over to people to: if I don't enjoy a person's company immensely, I'll leave. I don't stick around if someone's making me feel even worse than I was already.