So I've been constantly feeling down, less motivated and had some other standard depression symptoms (like some suicidal thoughts -- I'm **not** contemplating suicide, just thinking that I'd be better of dead -- and sleep disturbances). After some time being like this, my friend mentioned that I'm clearly depressed and I didn't really believe him.

My perception of depression at that point was someone staying in his room all day, cancelling invitations from friends, no one being able to reach him, doing no homework, being miserable in bed all day. Meanwhile, I still went out, continued studying for university, played some games, chatted with friends online ... so there's no way I'm depressed, right?

Well... by examining my routine, it became obvious that while I'm not severely clinically depressed, my life was definitely on a downwards slope. While I still went out, I never reached out to my friends and always waited for them to take the initiative. I also postponed some of our plans and cancelled some others when I thought I could get away with it. I still worked on my thesis, but on a much slower rate and with weeks-long breaks. I played video games and watched some anime, but the entertainment I got from them was noticeably smaller than some years ago. I was not lying on bed all day, but it did take me longer to get out of bed in the morning, and I lied in bed or napped for some hours in the afternoon. My outlook for the future is bleak, I've never been this pessimistic before in my life; I was always some kind of 'grounded optimist' that looked for silver linings.

I still don't feel "depressed", I don't even know what that even means any more. I don't want to assume the label and act like a pretentious kid that says he's depressed when everything in his life is fine. And I'm really embarrassed that my tipping point was that my friend got a girlfriend and that I was still alone. But at that point I was burnt out from university, my relationship with my parents is bad, so no support from them (emotional neglect and physical abuse at times), plus interacting with them is draining, and he was my only close friend, so the time I spent with other people got reduced. 

By that point I've been going to the university counselor for my issues with my parents, so I shifted the discussions for my current personal problems, but it wasn't really helpful. Plus their office isn't open in the summer. My close friend also has some troubles with his mental health, and had mentioned how great his psychiatrist was, so I decided to pay him a visit. At that point I still didn't really believe I was depressed, and while deep-down I knew I'd get out of that visit with a prescription for an antidepressant, I still low-key hoped he'd say I was overreacting and send me home. 

While I'm skeptical of antidepressants, I decided I can't do much else for my current situation, and went on to try it. Today marks 3 weeks that I've been taking it, but I haven't really noticed a difference, save for the side effects, which at least are manageable. I'll keep taking it until I hit the 3 or 6 months mark and evaluate if it is beneficial, but I'm not too hopeful.

I don't really know what I'll do going forward in life. I'm getting my degree soon, so I should be excited about the prospect of finding a job or pursuing a master's degree, but I'm feeling lost. I'm miserable that I spent this summer (which might be the last summer with so much free time) being alone and rotting at home all day, while everyone else had some summer plans. I feel both angry and sad that now all my friends are in a relationship and I'm not, and that most of them didn't even put much work in "getting" a girlfriend -- they just were at the right place at the right time, so why couldn't this also have happened to me? For one more time in my life, I feel like the odd one out. This is greater than the "no girlfriend" problem. In both primary and secondary education, I felt I didn't really belong with the people I hanged out with at school (didn't really make any friends at that time), and now that I feel I made some decent friends in uni, I still feel like the odd one out. 

Anyway, I think that's about it. Thank you for reading this.