shebutterfly,

This ain't abnormal. What's so durned frustrating about depression, leaving aside for a moment the immense suffering itself, is that it's a self-reinforcing state. What I mean is that the thoughts are often circular, as in: 'I have something wrong with me that's always been wrong and always will be,' or 'circumstances are lousy, they'll never change, and i'm not up to the task of fixing them.' Furthermore, human memory is state-sensitive--as in someone who has caffeine while they're studying for a test does significantly better if they've got caffeine in their system on testday. What that equates to is recalling every grief, trial/failure, and sadness while depressed. It's often really easy to forget that depression hasn't been a way of life forever, or even have that all-too-normal suspicion that you're malfunctioning or impaired. Seven years ago when a major depression first hit me, I said to the psychiatric nurse in earnest "I've lost the ability to form a cohesive sentence." She grinned at the irony--I got her joke and was somehow unamused at the time, but it makes me laugh now.

I'm certainly not saying that this is applicable or relevant to you. But I am suggesting that counselling, the talk-therapy route might be well-worth the examination to determine whether your depression has its origin in dissatisfying or stress-producing circumstances or even a grief-producing event. I'm fully aware now of what circumstances/event produced my grief, and wish very much that I'd recognized and appreciated my health back then.

At any rate, now that I've exposed my bias against medication, still goes without saying: please take excellent care of yourself and steer clear of booze/grass/anything that's a depressant, listen to lots of music (seriously, it's got a pretty well-documented positive transformative effect on neurophysiology), and keep up with at least one or two close friends, difficult as that may be: isolation results in progressive atrophy.

Good luck & hugs, we're here for ya too.