I don't know how relevant this is, but maybe you can take something from it.

I still remember the day clearly. It was the middle of winter, and I was lugging laundry outside to take it to the nearby laundry room. As I walked out, it felt absolutely as if a huge weight had literally been lifted off my body. I had no idea what was going on.

I put down the laundry and stopped to think for a minute. I noticed that it was an extraordinary day -- a sudden spurt of "false spring" in the middle of a really yucky winter. Then it hit me how really down I had been for the last several months, although it hadn't really struck me how bad I was.

Then I started to remember how this seemed to be a pattern: how every winter I turned into someone much unlike my usual self. It was one of those mind-blowing moments of clarity, for something that should have been obvious long ago: my moods are severely affected by the weather.

Once I realized that, I was able to start watching my moods and the weather, and could start to predict when things were going to go bad. That did help some, and I thought I was getting much better as a result. But last winter was the worst yet -- it was a very bad winter weatherwise here, very dim and gray all season long. And there were times I just couldn't seem to do anything, or where I would magnify the most trivial problem into a catastrophe, or so on.

So I finally bit the bullet and went to a trusted doctor about it, and he agreed that I seemed to be a classic case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. We tried one drug that did nothing (and had some unpleasant side effects), but the next drug worked great. It didn't change "who I am", or artificially affect my personality, as I'd feared drugs would do; it simply restored a chemical balance that got upset with the lack of light and heat.

Sorry to go into such detail about this, but maybe you can find something of your own situation in all this. In any case, do see a doctor -- it very likely is a medical condition that is very treatable.

-- Trip