Here to learn again

I'm not sure what to say here, so I guess I'll just write the first thing that comes to mind.

I'm new. I'm 31 years old, and I've been dealing with undiagnosed depression for as long as I can remember. I can't tie my depressive episodes to any particular thing or trigger, which makes it feel inauthentic and not something I could possibly explain to anyone. It's just kinda something that's always there. If I were to put it in a metaphor I guess I'd call it a scratch. A scratch in the back of your mind, constantly. Most of the time you can ignore it, even enjoy it despite never even having an itch in the first place. But sometimes it becomes all you can think about. Every thought, every dream, every feeling is scarred by the scratching. It's loud, and it's sharp. And the only way to quiet it, as counterintuitive as it might seem, is to force yourself to ignore it. Refuse to acknowledge it, and it goes away. At least for a little awhile.

It's been more frequent and much more intense in the past year, those times where I can't ignore it, to the point it's now become something I can't hide anymore. It's turning me into a burden on my friends and family. It scares them to have discovered this other side of me. So I suppose I need to do something to be able to at least learn how to mask it again, for their sake.

So I guess that's why I'm here. I need to relearn how to ignore the scratching.