Depression: Struggling

I am struggling.
It's my fault I know. It's me, trying to do too much. Then getting tired, exhausted and falling into a dangerous place.
A place where the Black Dog can get at me.
It is relentless this beast and sometimes it seems just so much easier to let it devour me, to suck me dry.
But I don't like who I am when it happens. I hate myself when I become too weak to fight it off. I am vile in my own sight.
Somewhere I must find the strength to keep going to keep fighting.
God I wish it were that easy.
For those of you who have no idea imagine your worst despair then imagine you are trying to out run it. Sometimes you can ignore it, pretend it is not there but you know that really  it is forever on the periphery of your vision.
I say I wish it were cancer and my family give me sour looks. Yes, I know one of them has fought cancer and won. I know how terrrified they were and how brave to keep going. I am not belittling their battle, their fortitude. I try to right myself and explain that this is: "a cancer fo the soul" but they think I am overly dramatic and too full of sensibility.
We talk like aliens and I pity them their lack of understanding. I must understand them all. See things from their perspective, see how draining I am; how boring more like. Yep, my illness is boring because you cannot fight it with the wonders of modern science, it will not go away and I will not give in and die. So it is there day after day, month after month, year after year. Some would say I revel in my depression, that it makes me "interesting" that I only go on about it because without it I wouldn't be anything at all.
But that is untrue.
Without it I could have been so many things.
We all of us have a propensity for depression. Luckily mnay of us will not be triggered into it early.
My trigger was a severe bout of Glandular Fever coupled with a host of outside stresses which if I had had them but a few years earlier or later would not have made me intolerant to stress and caused me to develop a clincal depression.
I believe you don't just get drepression you develop it (unless of course it is Post Natal Depression which is entirely different). A series of triggeres/stresses brings it on, for many it is fought off but for a few  the combination is too great and a full blown clinical depression ensues. You never get rid of it. It underlies the rest of your life.
It can be managed and it can be held at bay but  we don't yet know enough to work out exactly what to do. So sometimes I am too tired and I fall and I hate myself for failing to manage it properly, for opening my mouth and saying stupid things, for shouting at my children, for not struggling hard enough, well, for not being normal....

It's been a hard couple of weeks, I am tired and struggling, but I will be OK. The safety nets are holding. I wish I didn't get so tired. I just wish I didn't have depression.