lindammarie,
i'm glad you felt comfortable enough to vent. It is lonely when you don't know yourself, but I have a suspicion that you know more about yourself than even your closest loved one. I've been depressed for about forty years, and depression tends to turn you thoughts inward and ask a lot of questions. Questions that no one else would ask because they wouldn't know enough about you to be able to.

Having people that love you is worth a lot. If they have continued to love you, its not exasperation that you see. Its fear, concern and probably some saddness thrown in because they can't do anything to help. They are afraid they might lose you. I tried to take my life for the first time when I was 19. Febuary 1, 1982. For years afterwards, my mother would start calling me and hovering when I visited just prior to the anniversay of the suicide attempt. She was afraid I would choose that date and end it.

I agree with your statement that depression is something you fight for life. Medications and therapy are only bandaids. For many people those things improve the depression, but it never quite goes away. Triggers such as the loss of your brother set off a wave of depression. Long term, chronic depression is very much like being in a state of fresh grief all the time.

There is no answer for why you are alive and those you have lost are not. At least no reason that we can think of. That being said, you probably have more empathy and understanding of emotional suffering than those without depression do. What you decide to do with that knowledge is up to you. I'll bet you would never tell someone else with depression to "suck it up" or "get over it". Its hard to feel good about yourself when you don't have the energy to maintain a normal life and feel like you are just wasting the life you do have.
If you killed someone else either to rob them or just because you felt like it, that would be wasting your life. Depression isn't wasting your life, its just harder to make your way through it.

Sam2