 Hey there,

feels good to talk to people who just as me suffer depression. I never talked about it much on the Internet though one of my best buddies (who is a psychiatrist), my parents and some other people know about it. It's not many and I feel it's better this way but at least I can talk about it here as I am anonymous on the Internet (I hope).

Anyways, for me it's been many years that I am in a severe depression. Mine has developed through a chain of various dumb decisions I made that lead me to the place I'm at now, things I can't change now, can't simply make  forgotten since the wheel of time keeps spinning.

It's  really interesting though as a 19 year old me would have never believed  to suffer severe depression 16 years later (though it started many  years ago). Back as a 19 year old I just graduated from school  successfully and had every possibility. Like the world was open to me (a  luxury many people sadly don't have) and I was dumb enough to not see  clearly ahead of me, thinking about what I WANTED from life or where I  would love to end up. Now I know and thinking back my 19 year old self  should have known, it's not really hard to figure out and I would tell  my 19 year old self to think about it and keep chasing his dreams  (especially since there was so much time for it).

The  path I walked though was a pretty dark one (nothing criminal, nothing  that would at first glance appear as particularly dark) but I managed to  scare away many people that in retrospect would have been great  buddies, friends and even girlfriends/ relationships.

Like the old saying says: You are your own worst enemy. It's true, it really is. I have experienced it myself.

As  far as I know there are two kinds of depression: Depression that is  genetically/ biologically caused and depression that is the product of  bad experiences and decisions you made (let's call it a reactive  depression). For me as you can imagine it was the second. And I could  punch myself for it as what I did in all these previous years was almost  a textbook example of what not to do/ bad decisions. The worst part is  that I have this mental image of an alternate reality where I didn't  decide the way I did, where I was smarter and while I know it's a mental  image it doesn't feel that way.

The worst thing is it's a devil chain. A bad experience leads to me feeling worse. While some people learn to hide their depression and keep smiling and joking in front of others (just so that others won't realize how you truely feel) I don't have that "gift" as I am usually in a bad mood and are perceived as a very unfriendly person by others which again leads to social alienation which makes my depression even worse. 

It's gotten really worse the last few years (interestingly AFTER coming back from being homeless and living on the streets for half a year) to a point where I don't want to live anymore, where I want to forget.