For most of my life, I was really not okay. As a kid, I had angry fits for as far back as anyone can remember. I remember crying myself to sleep, asking myself what was wrong with me and my family at around age 6 or 7. At age 11, after a long history of alcoholism, my dad died, so that threw me out of the loop for a couple of years. Right about when I stopped hating my life, I started getting bullied in school, which made me hate myself and want to die. Things got better in College. For the first time, I had many friends, and cared about what I was doing. After graduating, I slowly deteriorated, much of which was triggered (though not caused) by my then relationship. 2 years later, and I didn't want to live anymore and spent most of my time at work fighting back tears. Up to this point, I had a vague understanding that something was wrong, but didn't understand it as this overarching theme in my life. For much of it, I thought it was just normal to struggle from time to time. Only when my girlfriend told me "you have a depression" when I was bedridden crying for no reason, and me denying it by saying that that's far from the worst I've felt, did things start to make sense. Long story short, my then girlfriend got me into an 8 week inpatient programme, and that pulled me out of it. I'm still working through the lot of it with the help of a therapist, but these days I'm doing okay.