People with experience will tell you that buying a house can be one of the most stressful things you'll ever do, but that's behind the actual house move which apparently is much more stressful.
I've been in the process of buying my first home since May 2023 as this is the first time I saw the site and fell in love with my desired plot. It's set away from most other things, in a cul-de-sac type style area of the site but it is a good drive through the modern day rabbit warren. It's now March 2026 and I've been set back once on the date and twice on their finishing errors...so far. These are stressful in their own right when you're trying to get ducks in a row to move out of a rented property where the estate agents are asking when the keys are being returned (I haven't given written notice yet, calm down), I need a cleaner to come in and do all the cleaning that I won't have the time to do. I need to arrange a snagger to check out the house and the flooring to go down. I need to hire a van, I need to plan my work time off as my partner won't get any due to recently taking on a new job I need to arrange care for the children as it appears it'll likely be all hands on deck during the Easter break too.
I have buying,moving and organising stresses...but now mix in 3 family deaths all in the space of 2 years and 7 months, therapy for the grief, and the erratic emotional rotation of fight or flight which starts the moment I wake up and often keeps me up in the early hours.
I'm not sure if there are enough self-help/grief podcasts out there to teach me to regulate my emotions between therapy sessions at the moment.
In my world where questions are circling all day, every day, from the children about when we're moving. And my plans that were so structured and organised on moving are becoming more and more like wet spaghetti with no direction. My personal calendar is changing day to day, with the constant requirement to be on my phone to change appointments, cancel meetings or squeeze someone in within the couple of hours that I have.
I am forever exhausted between night shifts, and full days of training, going to the gym to try and keep my head space calm and clear, keeping up with all things school, trying to be the best partner I can be, and fighting the overwhelming urge to drop everything and run away somewhere that all of these things don't exist.
No one said life would be easy, but I never imagined a period in my life being this emotionally and physically unsettling.
