It’s not exactly rocket science to know that stress has an impact on health, even more so when there is an underlying illness. And buying / selling houses, is pretty stressful as it turns out. At least it seems to be for us.

This is our second attempt at moving house. The last one started three years ago and was so traumatic that it took us until earlier this year to feel ready to attempt the whole thing again. And once again we are experiencing the most ridiculous streak of bad luck. In summary, our experience has gone something like this:

May 2016: put house on market
October 2016: accept offer and put deposit down on new build
October 2016-February 2017: go back and forth a million times with searches, contracts, react to pressure from buyers to move out quickly, find a rental, pay deposit. 3 days before exchange…buyer pulls out

May 2017: get new offer
May-October: tackle multiple legal issues with new build, after much stress and agonising decide to pull out. Can’t face any more. Give up trying to move. Pay a fortune in legal fees.

May 2019: finally over the previous trauma, put house back on market
July 2019: accept offer. Put offer in on amazing house
July-September 2019: back and forth with surveys, searches, enquires Another massive bill racked up. But the end was nigh. Exchange was planned for September 25th, completion for September 27th. Movers booked. Kids school move planned. Finally allow ourselves to get excited

September 24th: buyers pull out. Chain collapses. £1000s down in fees, searches and surveys, still no house move.

We are now in an awful situation where are vendor still wants to sell to us, but obviously can’t until we get a proceedable offer and even if we are lucky enough to get one before someone else snaps the house up, we then have to go through the whole torturous house selling process again. With no guarantee the exact same thing won’t happen again.

In the meantime I am doing everything I can to make sure this whole nightmare doesn’t trigger a flare in symptoms. A few weeks ago my migraine peaked badly to the point where I had to take my first sick leave in months, which was gutting, but I feel back in a decent ‘maintenance’ place now. Mostly via a combination of a shit tonne of meditation and mindfulness, a new round of supplements and allllll the chiropractic, acupuncture and osteopathy you can shake a stick at. Plus on what should have been moving day, Garry and I decided to disract ourselves with mini golf and drinks with an impromptu date night which didn’t help my migraines but definitely helped my mood and sometimes that is way more important.