Thanks for posting this thought-provoking thread. I don't know if I'm generally depressed in the technical sense. I guess I perhaps have flashes of true depression that come-&-go. But I'm profoundly sad 24/7/365.

I'm painfully aware of my triggers. Some revolve around the fact I have no idea how or why my life went so wrong, or what caused it to go off the rails to begin with. What I do at least think I know is that whatever caused it occurred early in my life. (I've never done much of anything in the way of therapy. And it's too late to start now.) Other triggers revolve around all of the damage I did along the way. (Although there might have been a time I could have claimed victim status, I trampled that epithet along the way.)

Growing up there was no such thing as depression. You were either "good" or you were "bad". (And if you were bad, you heard about it.) You were either happy or you weren't. And no one much cared or paid attention to which it was. I learned early in life there were things about myself I must never tell anyone, nor did anyone want to hear about it. (I probably couldn't have expressed it if they had asked.) So I just pretended (and not very successfully) to try to be the person I was expected to be. And over time, little-by-little, it all crumbled around me taking innocent others down in the process... just another turn on the misery-go-round of life I guess one might say. Oh well, at least it's all rapidly closing in on the final turn, for me anyway.