Frying pan or fire? Fire or frying pan?

I've been fighting depression for somewhere around 18 months now. There was a break for a few weeks just before the baby was born, which lasted until she was a few days old.

I keep holding out, waiting for this to reach its natural end. When I was pregnant, it was the end of the pregnancy that was supposed to bring me relief. When I lost the dice roll after she was born and wound up with a second act it was supposed to fade away after a few months, as the pregnancy hormones worked their way out of my system.

If all had gone well, it might have worked out that way. Unfortunately, circumstances haven't been so great, which means that, in addition to the physical factors underlying the depression, there have been more than enough environmental factors to make anyone depressed.

I'm thinking I need to go see someone. I had the opportunity during the pregnancy and then again afterward, but avoided it. I don't really know why I didn't want to go. I didn't know at the time. I just couldn't bring myself to make that appointment, and when they made one for me (after the baby was born,) I called to cancel it.

I can hazard some guesses. After all these months of navel-gazing I should have some idea. For one thing it's never easy to do anything with small children, much less make it to regular doctor appointments. Being depressed, the last thing I was could handle was all the stress of trying to find someone to watch a toddler and a newborn for a couple of hours every week (visit time, travel time, etc.) I didn't think a therapist would be too happy to see me with two active little ones in every session.

I also have that BA in psychology, not to mention a great deal of practical experience in dealing with the psychological community. When you have as many mentally ill family members as I do you pick up a few things. Wanna know a secret? We don't know that much about mental illness. We have drugs that can help, sure, but no-one's really sure exactly how they work and when they're going to work. In other words, there's a remarkable similarity between the modern psychiatrist and the primitive witch doctor.

If I go to a therapist, the first thing any reputable, informed, educated, competent provider is going to want to do is get me a prescription. But wait! We don't know exactly what causes depression. There are no tests that can diagnose depression, no reliable way of knowing what medicine is going to fix the problem. We know more about viruses than we do about brain chemistry and how it effects the way we feel and the way we see the world.

Post-partum depression, situational depression, incipient bipolar disorder - after all these months, who knows how all this is interacting in my head and my body? I don't know if I want to offer myself up for musical chemistry, taking first this and then that for a couple of weeks at a time, enduring various side effects until we find just the right pill or combination of pills to lift me out of this.

And of course, ultimately, I'm scared. I don't want to find out the family illness has finally caught up with me. Denial is so much better than that reality. Being mentally ill means losing your friends, losing your family, losing your ability to support yourself, losing your life. As hard as it is to watch my loved ones going through this, I am selfish enough to prefer watching it to living it.

But I'm so tired right now and I just don't see how I can keep on coping. If only there was some test they could do that would tell them exactly what medication would take care of this, some kind of psychotropic drug that worked like a broad-spectrum antibiotic.

Failing that, I guess I'll just have to wait until the cure doesn't seem like a worse bet than the illness anymore