I have to say I thoroughly disagree with you on this one. In fact, regarding the beginning of the post I could not tell if you were being deliberately obtuse to make your point. The "loss of interest" that one experiences during depression is not a simple "getting bored of your hobbies" kind of thing. It is some weird, persisting feeling of anhedonia, where not only your hobbies, but the touch of your significant other, the company of your friends and even your favorite food are things you don't really react to or even look forward to anymore; you can be at the world's best party and you feel like you are in this weird numbing bubble looking at things as an outsider. You find yourself randomly tearing up through the day and waking up wishing you hadn't.

And regarding the "lack of energy" it's real: depression usually comes accompanied by anxiety, which can cause your body to basically be stuck on "fight or flight" mechanism on a chronic basis, which wears you off physically (at my worst I even remember waking up regularly with a really sore jaw because I clenched my teeth so hard during my sleep).

That was my personal experience. And I didn't go through it as some sort of reaction to my noticing that I was being unauthentic or not unique enough, or whatever you are trying to suggest up there. In fact, I am pretty much still the same person I was pre-depression.

It wasn't triggered by nonconformity with my friends, SO, or preferred activities either, since once I managed to get better I went back to do the same stuff I did before, but this time everything was normal again. My depression was just triggered by a shit ton of suffering delivered at once that proved to be too much for my poor little brain.

The only thing that has changed is that some of the aggravating circumstances stabilized a bit over time, and I have slowly learned better mechanisms to make things bearable and keeping myself functional.

When I got depressed, I didn't decide to "get sad" to win some sympathy. I was/am not looking to join the victimization Olympics and if there was a way to magically get rid of this feeling immediately, I would take it. Feeling that your brain is broken is one of the worst things you can experience, trust me. But I guess you cannot really know until you experience it and honestly is something I don't wish upon anyone.

Sorry about the novel, but I obviously feel very strongly about this. Having your suffering trivialized is not an easy thing to accept.