I didn't realize how much I had brought my friends down during last year's GREAT DEPRESSION until the friend who helped me to get through it fell prey to the very same affliction.

It was funny, I had never thought of myself as someone who could be depressed - but I was -and in a bad way.

I didn't see my own depression coming on. As far as I knew, my life was normal. My marks were good and my friends were the way they had always been, but those same friends had been trying to tell me something was wrong for a long time.

I recall being told that I was acting really negatively, and my two best friends said they did not appreciate being called names, even in a joking manner. I could see that I was hurting them but I didn't think I was acting any differently than I ever had.

Then I received an e-mail from my best friend that said that she was tired of being hurt and didn't want to be my friend anymore. When I first read it I was mad. It took all my strength not to get on the phone and tell her off.

As her message sunk in, I got used to the awkwardness between us. And then, another friend stopped talking to me. I guess even then I still didn't think that I was depressed, because it wasn't until a teacher told me that she'd heard that I'd been criticizing her, that I realized there was something really wrong with me. Part of what was keeping me from recognizing my problem was that I had always associated depression with suicide. I never did contemplate suicide, but I had a heavy heart.

The next few weeks were a haze. I did my own thing, found some peace by keeping a journal, and then I made a new friend, Jane*. I still have the note she to wrote me after we first met, saying that if I ever needed someone, just call.

I think in Jane I saw someone who understood my pain. She hadn't had the easiest life and she said that she knew what I was going through.

That summer, Jane and I worked at a camp. I met many new people, some who had also been through a depression, others who were even worse off than I was. I learned a lot and I grew up a lot. Jane didn't have the same good experiences. Not only was her summer really rotten, we almost never saw each other. Our friendship became strained.

I started school that September with high hopes about the year to come. I felt slightly out of place when I ran into my ex-friends, but eventually even that didn't matter so much. I was feeling better. Then, my so-called "best friend" approached me in the hall one day to say; "I don't even remember why we were mad!"

The relationship between Jane and me was practically non-existent by then. We weren't fighting; just not talking. That was my decision. Near the beginning of the year, she was so sour to me. Having spent time around her moods, I was starting to see what my friends had suffered through the year before, and what it must have been like to hang out with me.

But because I'd been depressed myself, and hadn't had anyone to support me through it, I decided I would talk to Jane. I described to her what she was doing to herself and to the people around her. She told me that she cried for a few days after our conversation, and I could tell she had "awakened", at least temporarily. But then the doors slammed shut again soon after that and she was back to her old self.

I wrote an entry in my little notebook to her that sums up how I felt. "For Jane: I love you, but stop this bad attitude. Realize what is going on. I have been there. We all have our downs and sometimes we come through with the same people waiting for us. I WANT TO BE THERE."

Things are getting better now. We have grown closer. I think that although, right now, our friendship hangs on a thread, it's slowly developing into string.

If you are going through a depression, or someone you know is, reach out. We don't have to be alone.

Melanie Charlebois, 15, attends St. Charles-Garnier High School in Brooklyn, Ontario.

*Jane's name has been changed.