Hi again confused...

I think I might have given the wrong impression in a previous post.

I'm in a depression that has lasted longer than any others previously, a depression that leaves me with negligible mental capacity, and means I physically cannot function. At the moment I really couldn't care less about emotional responses. They come and go, and they will get better if I can just raise the energy to pursue the things that will help.

I have a small part time job of six hours a week that I'm determined to keep and am scraping by just barely managing to do the work required because I know it helps my mental health. I attend all of the appointments I can, and go to all the places I am supposed to go... if I can.

Ideally, I want to be able to attend work, go to the lifeskills class I have once per week, attend a subsidised gym I've been referred to three or four times a week, attend appointments with my doctor, psychiatrist, CPN, grief counsellor and a therapist. I also want to attend the appointments deemed necessary by the jobcentre people.

But... I'm not getting enough of a reprieve from the depression to do all of that, and the point I mean to make is that before, without self-knowledge, without drugs, without treatment or support of any kind - I absolutely did better. I may have been unstable, but compared to this, I was better on the whole.

The worst thing about being depressed for this long is that I sense something changing in my brain. I mean, I've experienced a lack of concentration and memory problems with depression before, but now it just seems like parts of my intellect are dying, and I can't be sure they're going to come back. I feel... brain damaged in a way.

*shrugs*

eta: The reason I posted is because while I suspected it, this morning I got out the timeline I painstakingly constructed, and it's there in front of me in black and white. I'm not imagining that it's longer. It is longer, so much so that it's a drastically recognisable and measurable change to my mood cycle prior to treatment.