Sanctuary


If there was a secret to my survival, it would be my sanctuary.

For my entire life, I have been challenged to the point where I have lived on the edge of survival; that is to say, I have been challenged by a lack of privilege and the need to take care of myself with only limited access to privileges and limited access to benefits equating to a minimal level of survival in society. I have also been on the outside socially, and thus challenged in my every interaction with society and forced to be self-reliant in many ways as a result.

Being so treated by society as to feel like an outsider, I developed a need for sanctuary, a place I could feel I was safe from outsiders, meaning from anyone else but me.

Sanctuary was hard to come by as a child of course. Running home from school every day to avoid bullies, I did manage to find a few hiding spots, but they never lasted. I never had my own room as a child so sanctuary was, for me, always in my mind, and the things I did, and in avoiding others. I often took walks to the park on my own, but mostly spent time at the library hiding in my imagination.

As I grew, my stress grew, and my need for sanctuary grew. So strong became my need, that I left my lifelong home of Los Angeles at age 25 for a 40 acre farm far outside of anywhere in the country and far away from people. I would never return to living in a city.

In 2011, I moved to my final sanctuary on land, an off-grid cabin, literally four hours from civilization by car (three given my driving!) where I made a promise to take sanctuary from corporations, and renewed my vow to leave the country in a year if my housing benefits were not rightfully restored. They were not, and a year later, my ultimate sanctuary was mine to own.

My ship is my home, my hospice, and my sanctuary. Of all the people I have ever met or known, only about a dozen, literally, have been in my home; and of those, almost all were crew or potential crew for sailing.

There is a scientific element to my need for sanctuary, and it coincides with my being so different than most people. My need for sanctuary is a very human need for intimacy, for a truly trusted environment. And with my understanding of empathy and human beings, that cannot happen for me unless there is someone at least as empathetic as I am. I have yet to witness such a thing, but do believe it possible.

For me, this is a difficult need to meet because I cannot communicate well, and most people these days rely almost entirely on verbal communication over what empathy reveals; including body language and non-verbal emotional expressions. Having someone in my presence, especially my home, who is not highly empathetic presents a level of intrusion into my sanctuary and diminishes that feeling of intimacy, that trusted environment.

So why the need for such an environment? Simple: to unwind from the stress of dealing with a dishonest world. I am not like you. I cannot tolerate dishonesty. And all social interaction in society and outside of an intimate environment are dishonest. So I have almost no ability to tolerate social interaction; a far worse condition I now realize than agoraphobia, the fear of social interaction.

When I am in social situations, because the damage to my brain affected my memory in many ways, I am constantly having to calculate and be aware of the truth of the situation. Obviously this is very resource consuming in my mind and does cause actual mental fatigue. And the only way to rest from it is to have sanctuary, to be in a trusted environment, or alone, where no such calculations are necessary.

Thus, sanctuary is my most important need.

And living in a marina where I pay $1700 USD per month isn't fucking giving me that sanctuary because these rich fucking assholes got that way not through their hard work, but through their ignorance of the suffering they cause to others.

Fuck you rich assholes.