Thoughts on depression

This post, by a friend of [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]'s, almost perfectly encapsulates what it's like to be clinically depressed. I heartily recommend reading it.

This part, in particular, resonated for me:

Clinical depression is a hostile entity. It's you, but it's not-you. It's an imbalance in your body's basic mechanisms that affects your higher thought processes--the stuff that's not hormones and nerve impulses and biological imperatives. They're your thoughts, but something is thinking them for you.

It is, in simplest terms, a hostile entity in your mind that uses your own thoughts to kick the crap out of you. And when you're crumpled in a broken heap, it doesn't stop. It keeps right on kicking. Like [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] said, it's very disturbing having something inside your head that's not entirely you, thinking your thoughts for you.

Its goal is to make sure it's here to stay, and wreak as much havoc as possible in your life while it sticks around. And it will. On you, on the people around you. On your work, on your social life. It knows no pity, no mercy.

It'll use your doubts and fears, your pride, every negative quality you've got to knock you flat. It might even create some you didn't think you had.

Perhaps I'll dig up the work-related counselling service number today. February is always hard on me, and external factors haven't helped at all.