As always, yes and no. I'm a single father, my partner died when our daughter was 1.5 years old. A baby requires constant attention and care, so I didn't quite have the option of falling into some kind of depression and just doing nothing.
That said, I quite miss the abundant free time I used to have in my other life. Nowadays is constant battle about the littlest things. I pour the milk the wrong way and get screamed at for 15 minutes.
All too familiar.
Occasionally I stop to think what would I do if my SO passed away suddenly. I've found that it's easier to think about my own death than this.
Anyway, I hope you'll get some much needed downtime eventually.
Don't know if this was your intention but this comes across as if having a depression was a choice, which it rarely is with any kind of illness.
They didn’t have the option of neglecting their kids either; somehow it doesn’t stop them from doing so anyway.
Mental illness is I think a different thing. Depression doesn't imply mental illness, nor does mental illness imply depression. I understand and agree that many people let mental illness come between them and whatever. It's a problem. It's just a different problem.
Also what is depression? I'm very sad that my partner died. I miss her. Some people have a chemical imbalance in their body. These are entirely different things. Perhaps I shouldn't have used that word, which has so many different meanings as to lose meaning altogether.
When you have a kid and don't want to get out of bed the whole day, eventually the kid is hungry enough to start screaming, and it will keep screaming until you get out of bed and feed it. It really is in everyone's mutual interest, depression or not. It's harder to stay depressed when you have to do things. It's easier to stay depressed when you can lie in bed the whole day.
I personally think that viewing it as a choice is the more productive of the two. That is to say, people have the choice to persevere, keep trying to improve, and trying to recover. Nothing will change without intent.