Not sure where to stand

[Sparkls]

I havne't done it yet because I'm a wee bit scared but I'm probably going to post this as a PSA on my Facebook. Maybe it'll ring true with you:

I want to share something very personal with everyone here because I don’t think there’s any reason to be ashamed of it and I think the more we talk about it, the less shame there will be.
I don’t know when it started. My best guess is sometime during med school but it’s hard to really pick a moment when I noticed it. What I noticed first was I slept. A lot. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot by anyone’s standards. But I chalked it up to the fact that I’ve always loved sleeping. And med school is stressful, so surely its normal to sleep for 12 hours and take a nap during the day. I also noticed I didn’t want to do anything else. I was perfectly content to sit in bed all day. Where I once was a social butterfly, I found myself finding whatever excuses I could to not leave my house. I noticed I’d get excessively sad at things that were sometimes sad but didn’t really warrant tears (songs that were particularly moving or commercials about puppies). But I continued to ignore it. I felt fatigued but again chalked this up to the life of a med student. I stopped doing the things I loved. I really stopped doing anything that I didn’t explicitly *have* to. I was short tempered, irritable, and quite frankly, not the best person to be around sometimes. I really lost what made me me.
None of this was because I was a med student. All of these were my personal symptoms of depression. I was lucky in that I never wanted to hurt myself. I never thought life wasn’t worth living, I just had stopped enjoying it. I didn’t care what happened, one way or the other. And it took me losing some things very close to me to really look at myself and say hey, wait, that’s not normal.
So now, even while I’m going through something really awful, I’m also on antidepressants. And it’s really quite amazing how different I feel on them. The sadness isn’t gone, but right now I should be sad. But I have energy. I move, I want to get stuff done, I find myself wanting to *do* things for the first time in forever. I find that the apathy I had felt before is lifting. And there’s a lot of fear and excitement and pain, but it’s feeling. Depression has been like this person standing in the corner of my life bringing me down, preventing me from feeling real joy or excitement. And now, I can see him, acknowledge that he’s there. And perhaps most importantly, I can overcome him. I can beat him.
The sad reality is that in 3 months, I will be a doctor and it took me *years* to recognizes the symptoms of depression in myself. So look out for your loved ones. Look for the subtle changes. Recognition really is the first step. And also realize that this isn’t something you can control. You can’t wish yourself to not feel this way. This isn’t your fault. It wasn’t my fault. But it is treatable. We don’t have to feel like this. We can beat it. And there’s no shame in asking for help.