The Ever-Changing, Not Entirely Predictable Symptoms

Appetite:
Sometimes it seems like I'm always hungry. Sometimes it's just that there's food to eat and I'm bored so I eat it. Sometimes it's the feeling of comfort I get from certain foods - and so I eat food all the time.

And sometimes it seems I'm never hungry. I'll forget about meals. Or food is suddenly unappealing. And so I eat very irregularly.

Both are so unhealthy, I know - I'm just saying that these two both affect me - striking a crazy balance every winter. And throughout the winter I'll realize I've suddenly gained 5-10 pounds in a week only to realize a month later that I lost 5 pounds in 6 days. It's not a binge-and-starve sort of thing...more an "extreme interest turned disinterest and back again" sort of thing.

Sleep:
There are days when I want to sleep the entire 24-hour period that constitutes "a day." I can't get myself out of bed. My muscles feel like I've run a marathon. I'm constantly tired even if I do manage to roll myself out of bed.

And then there are days when I can't sleep even if I try. I have periods of insomnia that will last for a week...10 days. I'll sleep maybe 2-3 hours a night, and begin to feel like I'm losing my mind due to lack of sleep. I go on a week or two of extremely strong sleeping pills because that's the only stuff that will put me to sleep. This insomnia is not simply the "lay in bed, toss and turn, fail to count sheep" sort of insomnia. It starts before I even hit the bed. I just won't feel tired, and suddenly realize it's 2:00am. I won't get up and put pj's on and go to bed. It's almost like I'm afraid to go to bed, because if I do, I'll just lie there and be awake with nothing to do but think about being awake and how tired I'm going to be at work the next day.

And there's no pattern, that I can discern, for which type of abnormality in my sleep schedule I will feel at any given time during the winter months. It's an ebb and flow, with small durations of "normal" sleep patterns in the middle of the two extremes. Sometimes I can sleep, sometimes I can't. Sometimes I can't make myself go to bed, other times I can't make myself get out of bed. It's frustrating, so so frustrating...

A bright side in all of this?
Sure...albeit a sort of twisted, strange bright side. The problems I have with sleep and eating patterns have given me a pretty accurate way of figuring out when I'm suffering from a depressive episode:

Abnormalities in one or the other usually just means I'm overly stressed about something. I try to find the source and eliminate the stress. But when abnormalities in both occur, I can be pretty sure that I've hit a depressive episode. Especially if I can say that I've gone through a week of some sort of combination of sleep and eating pattern inconsistancy, then I generally know I'll be hitting a slump (meaning a depressive episode) soon, if I haven't hit it already.

So, in my infinitely optimistic state, I guess even these crazy symptoms serve their purpose in some marginally good way.