Tick tick tick -BOOM!

Living with someone with Bi-Polar is extremely difficult. Every day is like walking on eggshells. From the moment she walks in the door your senses go on full alert, not sure what to expect but expecting the worst. nine times out of ten her first words are words of complaint. I don't think I've ever known someone complain so much. Dinner time is the worst. I have seven to cook for and a tiny kitchen, put anyone else in there and tell them to cook for seven and I'm sure they wouldn't cope. Not only that but I usually have to cook two or three different meals. It's all in the timing, most of the time I get it right, but sometimes I still screw up. So, when I've been through this trial the last thing I want is complaints and insults about my food. It's cold, it's not cooked properly, it's got no taste, it looks disgusting etc etc. No-one else complains.
The mood swings are hard to deal with. Sometimes she's hyper happy, loud, bossy, and really full of herself. She's difficult to deal with like this, you just have to go along with it. Then she's miserable, her life is a disaster, she can't take anymore, and she sobs and sobs.
You can sometimes see her inner struggle as she tries to maintain some sort of equilibrium, especially around the little ones. She'll be kind and play with them, but then, when she's had enough, she wants them to go away. Not easy for a six, four and seventeen month old to understand. She can't stand the noise, she can't stand them in her personal space. Sometimes she will struggle inwardly and remain calm while asking for them to go away, but it they don't she will explode. The struggle is something new, in fact I see her struggle in other areas too (with me in particular) You may think it strange but I take the struggle as a good thing, because it shows that she's really trying to control herself. Before she struggled she just let rip.
I spend most my days biting my tongue, not reacting to her. I tread the eggshells, I go out of my way and my own comfort zone to keep her in a stable mood. The same goes for her older brother and my partner. But sometimes we reach our limits and can't take anymore. That's when the bomb goes off, particularly if it's me that's snapped. We have the most awful rows, no-one ever wins, we both feel awful afterwards, we both blame each other and we don't always apologise afterwards.
But, we both know that we love each other, and I guess deep down, we are not that different.