I know it has been several weeks since I last wrote about what has happened with my daughter Zoe, who attempted suicide recently. I did not intend to stop writing, but I found that I got to a point where my stress level reached a breaking point. I was exhausted, I was suffering from symptoms of what I assume were PTSD. I got physically ill, and reached my limit when I was trying to work on only a few hours sleep and was still dealing with the effects of a stomach virus. I was a basket case. I was sobbing every few minutes and just couldn’t take any more. I left work after half a shift and almost fell asleep at the wheel several times on the way home. When I did arrive home, I fell asleep immediately and was able to sleep deeply for the first time since Zoe’s suicide attempt. From that point on things seemed to get better.
However, I have just needed to step back from the circumstances of that horrible period of time and try to gain some distance. Zoe has also been in Oregon since just before Christmas and I think that has been a good thing, giving me a chance to heal and recover.
She seems to be doing better in Oregon, being able to spend quality time with her mom, her brother and her close friends. She also has been able to enjoy some liquid sunshine that she has really missed since moving to our sunnier, much drier climate in Utah. She will be returning soon and hopefully we will be able to start a new, more positive direction in our lives.
In the meantime, we are working on selling our RV so that we can move into the beautiful home where we are parked — both the tenants who had been living there abruptly moved around the time that this crisis occurred, a fortuitous set of circumstances for us. Hopefully we will have it sold before Zoe returns, but our landlord is hoping we can wait until he returns around the 9th of January. That is our highest priority right now, getting out of our cramped RV and into a house. It will make a world of difference for all of us.
I will return to writing again soon. I just needed some time and distance to try and heal.
alpinedon 