When I was 9 I remember writing to my best friend after moving away that all the color had gone out of my world. I hadn't heard that anyplace else before. I was vulnerable much earlier than that, and was hurting myself (mostly biting) at about five years old.

I would be interested also in what people remember of those early depressive symptoms, and how they understood or made sense of them. When did you realize what it was? I didn't know anything about mental illness until I started college. I think I was in my late 20s and had been in therapy several times before I made the connection that I had symptoms of depression as a child. I did know something was not right when I was 12 and was spending all my lunch hours in the bathroom crying, but I still didn't know it was something wrong with me or that could be treated. I believed that everyone in the whole world hated me and that it made sense to feel the way that I did. Nobody told me any different. Even the school counselor who talked to me once about crying in the bathroom just asked me questions (I told her that the whole world hated me) and she didn't offer any information or help.