Sanctuary: The Tale of a Modern Day Geresene Demoniac ... Chapter 1

The air was thick and gray and heavy.... I sat there in that place knees to chest.. breathing ever so shallow.... vacant eyes filling sockets dazing off into a distance … seeing everything... seeing nothing... I couldn't tell if it was the atmosphere that was cold or if it was me... the numbness felt as if it had completely over taken me and still I sat....

My head felt so heavy... resting it upon my knees a sigh ever so deep filled my chest and passed through my lips.... Could I be still enough that I would just disappear.... Hadn't I already... Sitting there my fingers danced thoughtlessly over the grass playing with each separate blade.. time passing … moments ever so fleeting...

Shrinking away … vanishing within... if I couldn't physically disappear I would depart from current reality into myself away from all that would cause pain.. cause harm... into the numbest of places where nothing could touch the truest me... where nothing could really affect me... because there would be no me to affect.... a physical image .. a physical body but nothing beyond that.... The coldness entered further into my being and I disappeared even deeper within.... Into a realm where my mind was blank and thoughts didn't come or go... a place so blank and so numb that it wasn't just about losing track of time it was as if time didn't exist....

Sitting there in that field beyond this place... a place where the color gray enveloped all.... a place where the air was filled with a silence so cold... so devoid of any existence... void of emotion... void of conscience.. void of life .. I would sit there... I would sit there and in that place … in that prison... in that gray thickness .. in that covering I would feel safe....

Their hands would still come... their words would still be spoken.. their bodies would still act and react but their capacity to touch me vanished …. nothing more than a vapor I would pretend their hands passed through me .. I would watch as if outside of myself as they spoke.. acted... Deeper and deeper into passages so intricate.. so far away from their grasp... embracing the gray... embracing the cold... embracing numbness.... removing myself from reality.. removing myself from the world.... entering another place altogether... embracing nothingness …. so thoroughly disappearing...

I would sit at desks … I would speak .. I would act... I would walk around hallways.. into and out of doorways... into and out of this place or that.... walking... looking... watching... living so separate from my physical reality.... eyes would see this or that but nothing would register... nothing would ever register... nothing …... upon my person I might as well been marked as the walking dead.....

I would listen … I would engage in conversation .. but even in that place it was still as if an observer in my life not a participant..... and the coldness would continue.... and the dying of a million deaths would linger..... each time vanishing further and further within... each time letting go more and more giving way to the grayness... giving way to the cold..... giving way to the capacity to vanish and become as vapor....

Staring in mirrors … looking into windows.. even my reflection would seem foreign... who was this person looking back at me... how was that a me … how was that image .. that face “me”... but then touching even those questions would prove too intolerable and I learned to vanish even further....

So sitting in that field... my fingers mindlessly touching this blade of grass.. that blade of grass... I would look up... I would lift my head from off my knee and I would look .. peering into the fog.... with a yearning so deep … a hungering so desperate... a need so painful.... into the fog I would look.. into the cold.. into the darkness.... beyond anything that I could even try to comprehend my eyes .. my soul would scan the horizon.... desiring beyond desire to see something beyond the gray... and yet the gray would only darken and the horizon would only disappear within the darkness.....

The landscape of the place was hopelessness... the air was despair.... the field though sown with grass was full of sorrow and envy... each blade a tear that had fallen... each blade an unanswered prayer.. an unheard silent scream.... the heaviness of the gray bore down upon my person a weight that birthed sigh after sigh... cold clung to my being as if it was offering a hug … but death was its embrace....

And still my eyes would lift ever now and then.. my eyes would peer forth from my lowered head with an appeal and a plea so desperate... so fragile... so needy... begging the horizon to be something different... pleading with darkness to release its relentless death grip.... but the winds would howl almost in a ghoulish laughter and a punishment would be enacted for even daring to hope that the horizon would bring something new....

Into a deeper chasm of self I would be wooed towards... convinced that only from within could I be safe.... the darkest of voices enticing me towards a inward reality full of vacancy … full of void... full of vapor.... hiding this portion of myself here... secluding that portion of myself there... separating and separating and separating... and separating... and leaving behind portion after portion of my soul.... as if a scattered relic... a scattered layout of dinosaur bones... relinquishing into the grips of death portion after portion of my heart as if in so doing safety could be found....

I learned how to breathe in the most shallow of places... as if having been drowned into dark waters I acquired the skills to breathe underneath it all.... gasp is more like it... not tasting air... not tasting color... not tasting sunshine... I learned how to operate because to use the word function would attribute to myself more of a reality of life then that which I lived... I learned how to go in and go out.. how to pass through season after season.. how to live minute upon minute... I learned how to play the game.. how to move myself through life... year after year would pass... and into all of it would I as a vapor travel through....

Nothingness... nothing engaging... nothing connecting.. no connection to the day.. to humanity... to laughter... to joy... bearing up underneath the power of the gray.. the grip of the darkness I stepped and stepped and learned its ways... falsehood... death... rob.. steal.. destroy.. envy.. jealousy...anger.. wrath.. malice... slander.. abusive speech.... evil deeds... walking in the futility of my mind...being darkened in my understanding... excluded from life... full of ignorance... having become callous.. having given myself over into the hands of darkness and evil and harm...

The land of death shade was the name of the landscapes I traveled.. It was the geography within whose borders I was held captive.... It's terrain was what was underneath my feet.....

Disappearing further and further into myself would birth opportunities for fancy... fanciful... wistful notions of other places.... filling my head with false scenarios of what life was... of what it could be... unbeknown to me these wooings were even more insidious then their more obvious counterparts of pain and sorrow.... Into these scenarios I would lose myself for hours.... only to emerge to the reality of the torment of what my day was truly full of..... the hours that had passed from made up places and delights would vanish into thin air... and I was left with only the falsest remembrances of the hopes of what those brief sweet moments were …. could be... never were ever actually.... And into the grasp of death shade I would vanish even further....

Dropping here and there once again hopes and dreams and the faintest of notions that there would ever be a different place for me to walk... within the tombs I lingered... bond... lost... alone...

Whispers would be caught upon the air … as if a sound was trying to float in upon the gray... a stirring … a hope.... a scent so sweet would pull my soul back from self created or demonically enticed caverns …

My head would shoot up off of my knee and attempt to shake off the heaviness of that which comes with dark places...

Yet other whispers would quickly sound … ones that felt more familiar ..ones that I knew how to hear...because they were more like that which I had always heard and their attempt to drown out the new would win over … my soul longing for comfort … needing places where I knew how to walk …

I had known death and darkness and separation... while their grip was horrific and their words full of venom they were what my soul understood and into their hands and into their realities … into their familiar places I would allow the shackles to be brought down even harder... the deafness of heart and ear to grow even stronger....

I learned to hope for a different horizon was only an exercise of futility and despair... the gray was strong.. the landscape of death's grip relentless..... to think that there was something beyond was mocked... was foolishness .. was beyond all reason.... death was permanent.. It's sting shattering …. Its force to keep one barely alive.. lingering .. not being able to exit its shadow lands.... not being able to lay a hold of any other future.... It's voice.. It's prison...

However I was about to learn all of that was actually the truest of vapors.... a feverish roar to be showed up for an impotent bellowing...

Sitting there upon the valleys of the shadows of death … feeling its grassy fields underneath my person... allowing the despairing songs of its blades of grass to penetrate my soul... being enraptured and caught up into the grayest of atmospheres.... giving way to death and its shadows and all that it entailed.... Within that place I would begin to hear another song... and the sweetness of it would cause a breathe to enter into my lungs.... air that I had never tasted... filled me... a courage to once again lift my eyes away from the dullness... from the void.... would touch my inner most being and I would begin to learn the truth .. the truth of what those shadows were.. what that death was... I would learn that there was a deeper reality where the truth shouted clearly .. Oh death where is thy victory … oh grave where is thy sting... familiar dark places were shown up for that which they were … empty lies... light was breaking over the horizon...

….. A truth spoken prophetically from a man who had lived so very long ago … That the people who are walking in darkness Have seen a great light, Dwellers in a land of death-shade, Light hath shone upon them. (Isaiah 9:2 Youngs Literal Translation)

The One, the True Light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world..... (John 1:9) He was coming into my world... The Shepherd who is the one who leads us through the valley of the shadow of death so that we need not fear evil had left the 99 and was on pursuit...... Death-shade would be commanded to give over to the light, a prisoner that had been kept within its grasp... a whole new language would be learned and spoken... a fresh air would fill old saturated lungs... a hope.. a faith.. a courage... would sweep in on the strongest of winds … the most piercing of lights..... The grip of familiar death would be loosened .. The Balm of Gilead applied to its sting.....

Those times from another perspective.......

"The people who are walking in darkness Have seen a great light, Dwellers in a land of death - shade, Light hath shone upon them." Isaiah 9 : 2 Young's Literal

I don't know even how to start. What to say. What not to say. How to tell a story that was and is my life. I can think back but it is foggy. I was alive but I wasn't. I dwelled in a land of death and chaos. But Light came and changed all that...........................

"No, they aren't my parents." She said " My parents are dead." She stared at the two people who she had known all her life as mom and dad. Her mind blank. Looking at them as if through the eyes of a movie that was playing out before her. She was alive. She was breathing. Yet reality was far from her and her life more of a vapor.. This story is hard to write. But it is her story. A story that I came across and one that has taken a hold of me and will not let me put it to rest. So tell it I must.

I met her at university. She was crazy. She lived in a world of her own making. Between lies and imagination. Maybe just escapism. It was either she was dying of cancer or walking down the middle of the road completely intoxicated. I would watch her as she followed her impulses. She could be in the middle of telling a story (and by story I mean complete fabrication) of something she did or something that happened to her, and tell it as if she believed it to be true. Even when confronted with the truth she would stick with her lie as though it were a part of her. I think I share this story because I think there are a lot more people like her or maybe more like me and maybe we all need a road map of some sort to help us along the way.

I remember the first time I met her. She had this way about her. Drew people into her whirlwind. Some of us crashed and burned alongside her. Others left just not willing to take in the insanity. And I, well I watched. We met at orientation. She was a few days late to Freshman year coming off of a prior commitment at a Summer stock theatre. She fell into the scene. And I mean fell. Wild. Absolutely wild. Stirred up chaos wherever she went. I think she thought life was a game or a play and the rules.... well, what rules of life? And if there were some they didn't really apply to her. Or maybe she just didn't think through things. I actually came to believe that she truly just lived in an unconnected reality not fully capable of attaching to life and the human existence. She was sometimes amusing to watch at other times just embarrassing. But watch I did.

Then the day came when the administration at the school had had its full. Maybe it was that she (on a dare) had in broad daylight taken off all her clothes and (as she put it) sauntered across the main quad. " But I'm in the best shape of my life." She had said. "Why not?" Or maybe it was that she had accused one of the university's football stars of going too far (too much had already happened for anyone to believe her... sadly even I couldn't tell the difference between what could be true and what she created to be true.), or maybe it was the drinking and partying, maybe it was that the dean had just gotten tired of hearing her name pass before his desk. So having been given the option to stay under a very stick curfew or go home. She chose home.

The night before she was to leave I asked her the question I had been longing to ask since the day I met her................ "Why do you act this way?" She looked at me. We were sitting in my dorm room. I can picture the whole scene as if it were only yesterday. The white concrete brick walls that were cold to my skin. The crazy thin mattress on the bed that was more like a cot than anything. The completely typical durable wooden furniture that probably fills every dorm room across the US. My books. My stuff. And her. Sitting on my bed. Legs bent to her chest. Sitting there holding her knees. Her eyes looking at me. Penetrating my very soul. She just looked at me for what felt like hours. Staring through me. She was definitely in some other place. At least her mind was. Traveling back in time. Back through the days and times. Back to the truth she had spent so much time getting away from. I realized after the words came out of my mouth, that maybe it was unfair. Maybe that question had been wrong to ask and maybe mere curiosity wasn't enough to make someone have to think upon events they had tried so hard to forget. But the words were out. The question lingering in the air. And yet she still looked at me. Through me more like it.

…..........................................................................And yet another perspective..............................

I just sat there. Sitting on one of those college dorm room "beds." (If they can be called that) Across from me she sat. Was I a caged animal that I couldn't get up? I couldn't get up and leave. Couldn't leave my skin, who I was, my life. I couldn't. "Why do you act this way?" Was her question. Had it been so easy for her to ask? Did she realize what the events were? Those things that had created me, a mere vapor, of a human being. So unattached to people and reality. How did other people do it? How did other people string together days and months and years? How did other people live? How did other people care? Or take in reality? How did other people stay connected and focused?

I never really thought through anything that happened. Consequences of my actions. What are those? Ugh. How did other people live life and not just escape to some made up fantasy world that exists in imaginations like mine? What are people? What is this life? What am I supposed to be? Did I always know when I was lying? Yes. Did I ever care? Nope. Did I ever mean to hurt anyone? No, I really didn't. But I also didn't care if I was hurt. Or I had just gotten to the place where so much pain existed anyway that the reality of day to day existence didn't exist. I just plain didn't think. Incapable? Maybe? More like just not part of the human experience as the majority of the population knows it to be.

So that question. "Why do I act this way?" Wow! Did it hang in the air..... I vanished. Got lost back into days past. Ones that had been fought over to be forgotten. Living back the moments. Were they the reason I was who I was? Had all those things created me? Had I learned so well to escape into my mind. Was there nothing real about me but my body?

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Minutes past.

I watched her.

Wondering what were her thoughts.

Then it came......................

A story.

Not a story like the ones I had come to know or expect from her.

But the truth.

All I could think was....... "Would I even be alive if I had lived in her shoes?" As I watched her tell her story, (for the first time in her life), as I saw her relive moments she had fought to forget. Run away from. Or simply ignore. I saw a strength that had carried her to the moment we were in....... and I hoped that it would continue to carry her ..... For I knew she had long way home.

…........................................................................................................Put in other words still.......

I remember the night I sat in a dorm room in a university in a city in a state in what seems like another life time ago.... and as I sat I listened... I listened to her. I had asked what I thought was a simple enough question and yet the answer that kept spilling out of her was nothing simple......

Hands had touched her very soul and scattered the pieces to the winds.... it was as if my question uncorked a bottle within her and all that she had ever wanted to say kept flowing out of her as if she were incapable of stopping now that she had begun.... I heard her voice and yet it seemed as if it was from some far off place ... and I saw her eyes yet they looked like they were all together seeing something so different then the room we were in.... and in this place that brought forth the yesterdays into the todays I found my role as the listener and the listener I was.........

When she was done she was quiet for the longest of times and we sat there and sat there and sat there.... She closed her eyes as she sat and her body shook and I longed to hold her as she appeared to me to be nothing more than a trapped caged animal..... So small... so frail... I wondered if the wind would bring back all the pieces .. I wondered if the cage would ever open... I wondered if the animal would ever walk as a human.....

Those moments that she shared with me will forever be branded upon me and I will remember her story for all the days of my life..... and yet I wonder who she is.. if she still lives.... if the wind brought back all the pieces.....

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There were Winds that would bring me back... bring all of me back.. bring all those scattered pieces back into place.... not before many a valley would be tread... not before many a death-shade would be tasted... But the Winds and the Lights and The Light and The Wind are what they are and they blow away the shadows of death and fear with a passionate affection that knows no measurement....

I had sat and sat and sat within the valleys of the shadow of death .. having let go of all hope that a horizon existed that was different then the grayness and the heaviness that I had come to embrace .. come to know.. come to abide in its “safety..” It's familiar.... I had tasted and seen death... known it's grip.... given into its despair.... believed its lies....

And then at a moment.. where all would seem lost... where all hope would seem to have vanished.. where any possibility of anything new would seem the farthest from me.... a notion … a pull … towards a window... towards a street lamp … would cause my eyes to lift up and enable all but the faintest hope within my being.....

Never having heard that there were words that could formulate a prayer that would be a key away from the shadow lands... never knowing that there was a way out of the darkness... a path laid so very long ago.... a light that could penetrate the deepest of darknesses .. a truth that was strong and everlasting... a life … A Life.... A Man who is the Key.. is the Life... is the Way.. is the Truth... had indeed left the 99 and come running towards me wooing me towards Him.... a Lover passionate seeking one who seemingly was forgotten amidst a foreign land and its horrific ways.... His passion arising … Drawing me to speak.. “I don't know if you even exist... but if you do I will give you all that is my life...” Words pouring forth into a darkness but not for long as the room I was standing in filled full of a light... and left me knowing five things:... There was a God.. It had to do with Jesus... It had to do with the cross.. The Bible... and He was going to lead me on to a place where I could learn more about Him.....

Away from false self – created at best and demonically enticed at worse safe places into the glorious nature of His fabulous light.. into a safety so beyond the strongest of towers.. into a refuge that abiding in the shadow of His wings would enfold me and empower me forward into a life and liberty I had never known...