Heh, if only I was younger 
It’s really a lifetime of pent-up resentment.
Sudden surges of negative emotion, including crying.
But the main thing is just that there’s no enjoyment anymore. Not food, not people, not games or TV. I don’t eat much and I don’t do much of anything.
Having thoughts like the following: “Why isn’t everyone depressed? Those people who walk around smiling and happy are in massive denial about the world. The easiest life is so challenging and difficult that I guess you have to lie to yourself just to get through an average day. Even stuff that feels good, like love, health, sleep, and pets who crawl up in your lap because they want to be near you, are transient and temporary. Death, defeat, and loss loom at every moment. The incomprehensible thing is how you can be alive and not be depressed.”
Stuff along those lines. 
“Complacency is a symptom of mental health.”
Sometimes I think my current form of Depression is another term for “My Denial Button Is Broken”. I can’t put the thought of death and loss out of my brain long enough to go get a gallon of milk. It’s not that my thought (“We’re all going to die. He’s going to die, and I’m going to be really really really sad and messed up when that happens.”) is FALSE, it’s that it’s not useful right now in this minute. What I’m lacking is that functional denial mechanism that healthy people have that lets them get on with life as if they’re not going to be crushed by it someday.
Then just focus on every moment, which is where the only reality you will ever know can be found. No past, no future, no fate.
You know, I read this several times before it really sank it, but . . . I do this too. I think it’s why I eat out so much. I literally cannot think of anything to eat walking back and forth in my kitchen - most of the groceries I buy go bad before I eat them. But, if I go out, then I am required to make a decision. There are other reasons as well - it’s one of the easiest ways I know to get a little free socializing, I have some serious food issues, and between the depression and the ADD, I can’t plan something and stick to it to save my life. You gave me something to think about, Olives. Thanks.
I cry at the drop of a hat when depressed, sometimes spending 5-10 bathroom breaks at work in the stall to cry it all out before sitting at my desk pretending to be working. It is a dull ache in my chest, flat, lifeless, zombified, full of self-hate and rage for being this way. Mad at everyone for not understanding, feeling isolated, judged, horrified that I can’t feel joy. Wanting to unzip my skin and crawl away… mostly mute. Hard to talk, smile, look at people, be sociable, I can still function and get things done, it just feels like a 200-lb. weight on my back while doing it. An overwhelming urge to crawl into a ball in a dark room and close my eyes and never feel another thing again.
Anyway - on a brighter note… 
I am grateful I don’t have this ALL the time. (also, when depressed I smoke more, am more tired, and have no appetite). Basically feels like the ol body is shutting down.
What an interesting thread. I have linked depression directly to my diet – as long as I eat clean, I tend to be great emotionally and my energy level stays on an even keel. Pasta affects me the worst, even worse than eating chocolate or a lot of sugar.
When I did have depressive episodes, I never cried. But I haven’t cried since 1999 when I gave birth to my 3rd child.
Crying happens at the end of a depressive episode for me. I finally get enough emotions to feel something again and I cry unabashedly.
A leading indicator of a depressive episode coming is that I can’t make decisions. Not the hard ones like how to invest my income or whether to move, etc. but the easy ones like what route to take to work or what to have for lunch. When I sense myself waffling on the easy decisions, I need to take precautions for what I KNOW is coming.
What kind of precautions do you take?
Letting my husband know is the biggest. Getting my work ahead so I can slack off if I need to. Really just getting really organized in case I mentally disappear for a couple of days.
Oh, boy, can I relate to that one. I declare a moratorium on important decisions when I’m depressed, and try to make my husband decide the other things. I’ll spend an hour trying to decide whether to watch TV or go see a movie, terrified of making the ‘‘wrong’’ choice. It’s like the potential consequences are so inflated in that moment.
What upsets/irritates/annoys me is people who will say, “Well, if you know that X is a problem, and you know what’s causing it, that’s half the battle!” No, that is zero of the battle. I can know that my thoughts are irrational and I can know that it’s not normal to just want to stay in bed all day and not get out, and that does fuck-all to actually improve my mood or make me want to get out of bed.
I am currently in the middle of a depressive episode that has been going on since around Christmas. My last episode this bad was when I had postpartum depression after my third (and last) baby was born in 2007. I’ve been more or less okay since then. (I was on SSRIs and went to therapy for a year.) However, I also suffer from PMDD and that’s been ongoing, and getting worse as I get older. The one I had at Christmas was nightmarish and I think it triggered “regular” depression that I just can’t seem to shake. I have an appointment to talk to my doctor in two weeks, which is the soonest he could get me in.
Anyway, for me it is a combination of a lot of things, but the best way to describe it is the “cloud” that others have mentioned. I don’t want to go out and do anything. I only want to stay at home and maybe surf the Internet. (As someone else mentioned, posting on the Internet seems to be self-medicating for me.) I am easily irritable with people. I become extremely clingy and needy with my husband and best friend and start texting them constantly – one of the first indicators for me these days that something is wrong is when I start sending my best friend massive text message strings, five or ten or fifteen in a row, hoping he will see them and respond. It’s like, “Uh oh, this is a bad sign.” I start thinking that nobody truly loves me and that I am a bad parent/wife/friend/etc. (Feeding into this is the fact that when I am suffering from depression I really AM not doing a very good job of parenting, and I recognize this but it’s very difficult for me to do anything about it until the mood lifts a little bit.) When it gets really bad, I have feelings of despair and feel that my life is more or less a failure. I start wishing that I could just sleep and not wake up, because at least when I’m asleep I don’t feel miserable.
I’m not in the middle of a really bad day right now or I probably wouldn’t have the stamina to type all of this up. I’m actually feeling sort of okay today. I’ve been trying to get more exercise, and it’s helping… sort of.
Mine usually manifests itself as extreme guilt, about everything. Walking down the steps from my apartment to my car to go to the grocery store makes me feel guilty. Cooking dinner makes me feel guilty. It’s totally irrational, but it’s the only way I can describe it- like, “You shouldn’t be doing this.” A few years ago when I was in the middle of a pretty deep depression, I got an email that I had been hired for a short contract job and immediately burst into tears because I felt so guilty. It’s a horrible feeling. Crying is a big part of it, too, usually when I’m going to bed at night. Anxiety, on the other hand, almost always only manifests itself physically for me- nausea, tingling in my arms and legs, etc.
My only long bout of depression was years ago, thank og. When it was going on, I came home from high school, went to bed, slept all evening. Read a bit. Went back to bed. When I couldn’t sleep any more, read fantasy novels.
Made no decisions at all that I could help making.
At school, paid very little attention to what was going on, to the point that I would have to ask someone in the hall what the next class period was. I’m sure they thought I was on drugs. Probably should have been but I wasn’t. Still don’t recall what my teacher’s names or classes were. Oddly enough, I got good grades, but then I wasn’t learning much that I didn’t already know anyway. I did read all the textbooks (I’d read anything), so that may explain it.
I can relate to this from a period I went through about 15 years ago, but I’d describe the feeling I experienced as “self-loathing.” I can remember waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom (a pretty routine event) and walking half-asleep across the bedroom in the dark just CONSUMED with self-loathing… as though my very existence were a travesty, a mistake, an insult to all other living creatures. Not related to any particular event, just a sort of free-floating, global, existential self-loathing.
You know how when you take a spoonful of Jell-o out of a bowl of Jell-o, the hole just closes up seamlessly as though the spoonful you removed was never there? It was the feeling that it would be best for all concerned (me and everyone else), for me to disappear and the hole close up with no trace. This is different from wanting to commit suicide (I think); it was a rejection of the fact of existing, a disgust over the fact of my own being-ness. Hard to explain.
Don’t have it any more. Thank goodness.