Sometimes okay, then sudden despair

I have suffered from mild, chronic depression with occasional bouts of more serious depression for as long as I can remember.  I've never actually been treated for any of this, but the veil of the chronic depression started to lift when I left my parents' home and went away to college.  I've continued since then (about a decade) trying to work through it on my own by focusing on doing my work and confiding in my best friend, and I got it more under control than ever before.  

Lately I'm having trouble making it through the day and I don't know why.  My life is very good and I'm very fortunate, but I hate it so much and wish I could just give it to someone else.  Some days I'm okay, but about 60% of them I hate every facet of my life and just want to be finished already.  It feels like there is nothing to look forward to that starts to compensate for the pain of just living.  I saw a psychiatrist for the first time last week and he told me nothing is wrong with me but he can put me on meds if I want.  I had been trying to act normal and hadn't been feeling awful when I walked in the door, not realizing that he wouldn't want to listen to my history if I seemed in control of myself or that he'd try to get me to leave my half-hour appointment early, and in the end I couldn't stop crying in front of him and left feeling much worse.  Is it normal to feel fine and be productive enough one day and then be incapacitated with crying and complete hopelessness the next?  Or normal for a depressed person anyway?  My mother is bipolar, but I don't think I have this because I never really experience anything resembling a mania and the descriptions I've read don't sound like symptoms I have, the biggest of which is just complete and utter hopelessness.  Even on my good days I would usually rather be dead than alive; on my good days I'm just not compelled to dwell on the fact.  I've heard this is normal though.  I'm hesitant to take meds since I'm afraid that if I tamper with how I feel on my okay days I'll just be miserable all the time, but the awful days, which used to be maybe 4 out of every 30, are becoming more like 15 out of 30.  Has anyone had experience with this?  

Just writing this out I see that it sounds like I really should be medicated.  I'm still very nervous though since, when I was a teenager, my mother called a family doctor and asked her to phone in a prescription for me for anti-depressants without giving me the chance to see the doctor or talk to her, and being on those pills made me feel more awful than I had felt since kindergarten, and I'm scared of feeling that way again and becoming so debilitated by this that people at my work find out about it.  What I want more than anything is to stop feeling this way without having to focus on it so much.  I'm so tired.  

[onyxia]

Im really interested in replies to this thread as I have a similar decision to make. Ive just had 7 days of almost normality and I am so worried about losing those precious times. Im also worried that the times I want to take the meds are when Im at my lowest and cant think straight. Its desperation that pushes me in that direction and that makes me think its probably not the right one for me.

Personally I wouldnt take anything without first finding out what it does, what the side effects are, how long they may last. I would also make sure you read/talk to several sources.

I know this sounds really paranoid but I have been stung in the past and I would not want anyone else to go through the same thing. Doctors are only human and they do make mistakes. You also have to make sure that what ever you take has a risk factor that is acceptable TO YOU. Your doctor isnt the one who has to live with it if it goes wrong.