Thank you Leed - for sharing your experience with this illness.

I am yet to seek professional help with what I know to be depression. I know because I seem to be getting very high scores (for once in my life), with all of the on-line mental health tests. The test on this forum rates me as highly depressed and recommends immediately consulting a professional.
I'm not certain if I will do that yet, but I am glad I have taken the first step by joining this forum.

I do have suicidal thoughts, and in greater frequency - as of late. Many are instantaneous flashes of self mutilation with a large kitchen knife. I once watched a television program on how suicidal behavior is possibly linked to a certain (dark) part of the brain, and that we are born that way. The hypothesis was that we are born with such illness. I never thought that depression could be hereditary too, till you mentioned it.
I now begin to recall and peer into my childhood and see images of how my father must have been depressed too.

I seem to be going full circle - and in tow - with my father's life. He was a kind and caring man. Yet, an impulsive and proud man. He had every tendency to be obsessive compulsive and was betrayed by all who entered his life. He raised me well and instilled in me the best of my core values. I rebelled when I turned 15, as many do, and left home. He died of a heart attack a year later. It's been almost 20 years since, and I recently realized that I am following in his footsteps.

I have a lot to say and uncertain if I can indulge in this forum. But I also know - very clearly - that I have reached that breaking point and if I don't do something about it, I might be accounted for a statistic.