Hard to really pinpoint it for me. I guess it started when I was around 13 and my parents split up, then I got into some trouble and ended up in a juvenile drug treatment center for 14 months from the age of 15 to 16. I was never really the same after that. Since then it's come and gone in waves. Was good for a few years then lost a well paying job and my girlfriend within a month, after a while I recovered a bit only to slip back under similar circumstances a few years later. Recently I've lost a young cousin in a tragic accident and my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, these things have pushed me back down.

I'm starting to get "used to" these ups and downs being the normal flow of life, but that doesn't necessarily make them any easier to deal with.