I suppose it went as best as it could.  Despite protestations that "there will never be more supportive people than the four of us," it was business as usual.  My dad immediately blames the medications.  My sister comes up with reams of alternative and nutritional therapies to try.  My mom is the only one who takes it at face value and doesn't try to fix or blame me for this.

Most of my life this has been the pattern.  During adolescence, when things started going wrong (although thankfully with my academics and now my research I've never had any mental confusion interfering with my work from the depression), it was very intimidating to deal with my father.  He always wants me to be perfect and is disappointed that I'm not.  There's a lot of lip service to accepting me as I am, but the truth is evident in the constant back-handed compliments and sometimes flat-out statements that I'm not living up to his imagined potential. Despite having done the best I possibly could in my profession, I'm besieged often with his offer to pay me to go back for another degree, change my life and career, and generally make him proud doing something that he approves of and can brag about  to others instead of the library/research world I chose which (granted) is chronically underappreciated and underpaid.

Having mental and physical health problems on top of career disappointment also has him searching for a way to "fix" me in those areas too.  Having minimal experience with mental illness himself, he feels that this is a temporary problem that I've chosen to make permanent, since the only depression he's been through was precipitated by a particularly hard time in his life and resolved itself.  He got through it, so why can't I?  Why do I accept it as a lifelong diagnosis?  I've been honest with him and let him know that for people who truly have depression like mine I've known from when I was 14 there was something very wrong. This is not normal; in fact it's a pretty clear indication that this really is the textbook lifelong struggle that indicates a biochemical imbalance.

I've called him on his bullshit support many times in the past and we've been in quite a few arguments, but none of it has changed this dance we do.  I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and see how it works out, but given past experience I'm not very hopeful.  Still, I was honest, and if he can't appreciate that, and appreciate me for who I am, flawed and human, then it is just another thing to absorb and try to filter his criticisms through the lens of how he sees things.

Sometimes I wish I had a truly supportive parental relationship but you play life with the hand you're dealt, and try to remember that not everyone can be as accepting as you'd like.  Even the ones who love you.