My depression = me?

I'm noticing that, in my fourth major depressive episode and with a history of 20 years on continuous treatment that failed to effect a change, I'm starting to identify myself with my depression. I am beginning to see myself as nothing more than my psychological problems. Does anyone else experience this?

I also feel I'm giving up. I no longer believe I will find a job, and if I find one, I'll have to ge back to the activity that mentally crippled me ten years ago. I believe I'll never have a relationship anymore (and my medication leaves me quite handicapped on that front too). I know I'm never going to father childeren. I experience great difficulty establishing and maintaining frienships (I always feel inferior to the nice people I meet).

I am starting to realize I will eventually pass away bitter and alienated from those who would the loved ones of a normal me. And in the end I'll have only years of meaningless activity to look back to.

I believe giving up and realizing that there is hardly anything left of me are related. And I'm terrified to go looking for the creative, optimistic me I once was. He got too few chances, he was sabotaged too often, he's eventually taken up sabotaging himself. I'm afraid that, if I can find a part of that old me, someone will be ready to push him out of the way.
In a way, sometimes it feels more comfortable to cling to being down than to take another risk. I have become my depression because there's no exit except the one I'd rather not take.

Hello, Pliepla.
Yes, I frequently feel depression and anxiety have so entangled my life that they comprise the whole of me. I know it's far more complicated, but that's the way it feels.

In my mind I can imagine taking risks, but my conditions and lack of energy get in the way. Every once in a while, unanticipated, I manage to do something. I have not mastered a way to get those times to appear regularly.