In August 2022, we moved into a house with another couple that my ex and I are friends with. My ex notoriously did all the heavy lifting and unpacking during our moves — when we moved in together for the first time in early 2017, I didn’t touch boxes for well over a year until we would bicker and they would practically beg me to help. I wanted this time to be different, and I told them that. But it wasn’t. The packing was last minute but they still did 99% of it. I injured my thumb at work so I wasn’t able to lift much.
A week or so after moving into the house (now that I think about it, it was after I went back to work after taking a week off for the move), I started having breakdowns as I got closer in my day to having to go to work. I was struggling even more to wake up to my alarms, and I actually quickly accrued my limit of tardies at work to where one more would be termination - I got them just days apart from each other. Which was so unlike me, I’m on time to work/a couple mins early, but I’m so very rarely late. My partner would be the one to wake me up and urge me to get ready, just as before. So, my first week back to work, I just remember that the nights at home before I left would be full of full-blown panic and sobbing. I didn’t want to leave. I was tired, I was sick of the distance, and I was sick of losing my nights with my partner- the nights were always our time. I broke down and called my therapist. It was late, so I left a message. They said “don’t call again or you risk losing your place in line.” They were the only one I could find covered by my insurance. They never called back.
The panic attacks before leaving for work didn’t stop. Around august 13th, I felt what I could only describe as mania. I had never felt it before. I could barely sleep. It went on for weeks. However, on august 18th, I dissociated or nodded off (idfk) at the wheel. Thankfully no one was hit and my car wasn’t totaled, but we had JUST gotten it new that January so we were both devastated (we didn’t even get it back until a couple of weeks ago due to a parts supply issue - this added strain, too). I stayed manic until… probably two and a half weeks ago. I started sleeping closer to my regular “sleep block” in my schedule.
However, something that remained constant through this mania and even to this day, are my mood swings. I would take a tone or raise my voice or get upset over the tiniest things, and since my partner was always closest to me, they got the brunt of it. I would trigger them, and then it would just spiral into a crying and yelling fest (putting it lightly). Throughout our entire relationship, I could count on one hand the number of actual arguments we had. In this episode alone, it felt like almost every day. Or most days.