I had dinner tonight with a friend who is a former colleague, and although I’ve always known that she’s a pretty sensitive, fragile being, today I realized exactly how sensitive she is and how she tends to over-analyze and play scenes over and over in her head in an attempt to make sense of them. And I also learned that like me, mental illness seems to run in her family, as her mother battles with it along with some substance addictions, and a relative on her mom’s side committed suicide.

She said to me, I know how you feel and are probably scared of passing down that possible recessive gene to your kids; I was so scared of it that I decided a long time ago that I would never have kids.

It is a fear I have had in the back of my mind on and off. I thought about it a lot last year when Ed passed away and thought about my future children’s lives and how I would explain to them that they have an Uncle Ed, but he’s just not here anymore. I never want my children to suffer and go through what Ed had to go through. But I won’t let fear prevent me from attempting to be happy.