Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two

Just... yeah. This is lovely.

Sometimes it's difficult to read or hear about other people's experience of depression - it always seems to have a beginning, a 'time before'. I suppose they are descriptions of depressive episodes. All the tests for depression ask if you feel worse than 'before', if you don't enjoy what you 'used to' enjoy. When I read these I feel alienated - it's not that I've always felt the same, but I've had pretty consistent low mood for a long time, with frequent depressive episodes. I always frame my current experience with being 14 or 15, major depression with derealisation which you can read about in a previous post. Everything before that is hazy, and everything after is absolutely a journey from that point. A crashing-through-the-undergrowth, messy, awful journey, but with few places as bad as that first starting point. 

Reading Allie's blog, I question myself. Is this still even depression? Am I obsessed with how I felt at that time, and unable to accept that I can move on?
I have made a lot of progress over the years, and am currently coming out of an episode, so I suppose I can't inspect myself at this moment, and expect to find all of the markers that mean I am 'genuinely'  ill.
It's possible I have a personality disorder, and that's all mixed up with anxiety, and behaviour, and not just depression. But I do worry that I'm just lazy, that I want to avoid having to deal with anything difficult, that I'm weak and self obsessed, and not 'really' mentally ill. This picture of somebody 'faking it' 'for attention' reeks of stigma osmosed from the media, but still I wonder if that's just a conceit I've invented to excuse myself.

Even if that is the case - and I am in fact stuck in the past, an emotional hypochondriac - can I be excused, for having started my adult life in a place of profound darkness, and for therefore carrying it as my main frame of reference?