Mac HD greyed out in Disk Utility

Hey,

This all started after Mountain Lion, which slowed down my MacBook a lot. I tried to do a clean install and reformat my HD, and doing so it removed the partition already on it. When I went to restore the HD, every option is greyed out except for Verify and Repair Disk (which I have clicked on numerous times to no avail). I cannot even add a partition to the Hard Drive. This Hard Drive worked fine until I clicked erase (in which it gave me an error), and I just want to create another partition (which is also greyed out).

I don't care if everything gets erased, frankly I just want my Mac back to normal. I do have a Mountain Lion USB, but that does squat. Thank you Mountain Lion by the way for this long day in which my Mac still isn't fixed.

Any help is appreciated, I am new to Mac, just moved from PC which looks pretty good right about now.