A Bad Day

I feel utterly alone and desperate. Never have I had so much to say and not a soul to tell it too. I once had friends but I find more often than not that they are as lousy at friendship as I am. This isn’t pity………..it is my fault and it’s a path I chose to walk. I suppose it just gets overwhelming and surely there is an outlet some place in this world. There is no one who knows the whole story but then I don’t think anyone’s story is ever really told, at least not all of it and never to just one person. We are fragments of a whole, pieces that generally do not fit together but we keep trying to force them. The fragments of me that I have been trying to force just seem to shatter more and more leaving me with slivers of something that I no longer recognize. Darkness has crept in between the broken pieces and the more the pieces shatter, the more the darkness invades. With each piece of light that is swallowed by the blackness the less hope can shine in such places. I no longer dream of what tomorrow can hold but I live only to mark this day off as one I have made it through. As I write that last sentence, I wonder what exactly a day looks like that one doesn’t make it through. We hear and say that all the time ……”If I can just make it through this day….” Then what? How do you know if you have made it through the day………..how do you know if you haven’t made it? If you are still here physically does that mean you made it? What of the pieces that you left, that are no longer a part of who you are? I suppose they didn’t make it and when all the little pieces that make up the whole of me are gone then I imagine that will be the day that I don’t make it through.

Sanctuary

• Sanctuary

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I have been thinking about the word sanctuary over the past few days. The dictionary defines sanctuary as “immunity afforded by refuge in such a place and any place of refuge; asylum and a tract of land where birds and wildlife, especially those hunted for sport, can breed and take refuge in safety from hunters.”

With all of the ups and downs of the last few years, Sanctuary has become very important to me. It is ironic to me that the word sanctuary often means a holy place to us but yet it is often those “holy” places that we need sanctuary from. The so called “holy” places in my life over the last several years have caused me to run many times to find a place of refuge. Sanctuary has come to take many shapes in my life lately. An actual place that I find sanctuary is right in my front yard. In fact we have named it Sanctuary. It’s a small water garden/pond that my family works on every spring and summer. We have moved it two or three times, fish and all. We have planted flowers and water plants and nursed sick fish and sometimes had mass burials for the fish when their “sanctuary” has become defiled by outside sources. Sometimes the sanctuary has become defiled from within. Sometimes the fish produce too much toxic waste and it is fatal to most life forms that live in the Sanctuary. I have found that my other sanctuaries have often been defiled from within, causing toxins that often kill many of us. Toxins come in many forms……..gossip, lies, deceit, control issues…….We run into sanctuary then slowly turn on each other until we find ourselves in need of sanctuary from the very thing we thought would afford us peace and safety.

Above is a picture of our little Sanctuary and you will also find a song, written by me at a time in my life when I needed Sanctuary and found it in friends and family.