This just strikes so close to home... (Score 2)

All along my mothers side of the family there is a history of depression and recently, as medicine has become more adept at identifing psychological conditions, both my mother and her father have been diagnosed as Manic Depressives, and are both taking medication to help calm them. Although I had never made the connection, the doctors that have spoken to me consider it quite likely that I and my siblings could be affected by Manic Depression as we grow older. I am 18 now, and find this whole thread quite disturbing. I find people recalling their own experiences, which startlingly parallel much of what I do today with my own life, as well as those few who refuse to believe that the 'mentally ill' are just lazy and looking for an eazy excuse to anything. My mother, struck hard by Manic Depression takes several medications daily to control this, and what does she do for a living? She programs. Which is where the direct connection to this story and thread comes into play. All that is bad, but I find myself paralleling many of the experiences that people are describing here. During my teen years I have grown more and more disgusted and distrought over the apparent selfish and pointless american society of Big SUVs, Pop dances, and, well, the stupidity of the average fellow student. Faced with this kind of existance, what have I done? Probablly what many others here have... Retreated from society as a whole, and now spend my time persuing things that make sence to me... things where I can understand and respect the logic. Things that challange me, where I like to try to solve an insurmountable problem. I have taken up learning my first programming language, C++ with a vengance, which I love to do. While admittidly, I cant program anything of the slightest use just yet, Spending my life devoted to such arcane technical aspects doesn't scare me away as Normal Life(tm) does. And I enjoy it. Which seems to be exactly the path that my mother herself took, where she is now considered one of the best programs ever where she works, and of course knows fluently about every language ever to exist. All of this leads me to think... Am I already destined to become another statistic on some some psychologists chart, following the path that I probablly inherited from my mothers genes, dependant on god knows how many drugs to avoid suicide inducing depression? or am I just another social reject who would think nothing of calling himself a geek. To be honest, I don't really know. Rich S