Sanctuary

I think most of us have a sanctuary.  A little corner of the world all our own, where nobody can touch us, where everything is only about us and our thoughts.  It's a place that can't be desecrated.  A safe haven.  For some people it's purely mental, for others entirely physical, and for some (or maybe most), it is a combination of the two.

Let me make a small jump here.  I am an introvert.  I'm not antisocial (okay, maybe a little bit) and I'm not incapable of making friends and I'm not a hermit.  I just like spending time by myself.  I like being alone sometimes.  I like quiet activities and being engrossed in my own thoughts.  Long walks, hot cups of tea, and lots of time with me, myself, and I for company.  That's the way it's always been and that's precisely how I like it.

As you may expect, then, I have a sanctuary.  And I probably use it more often than extroverts who find more comfort in others than in themselves.  I'll put it simply: my sanctuary is my shower.  I take long, boiling hot showers when I want to think about things.  We've all heard the jokes about brilliant ideas in the shower.  That's almost the way it is for me.  I say almost because I don't have revelations.  I just use the shower to think.

When I'm too tired to work or too emotional or not emotional enough, I take a shower.  I like spending time alone surrounded by hot steam and boiling water.  I spend hours at a time letting the water wash over me and letting my thoughts pick their own course like the rivulets of water running down my body and the walls.  This is my sanctuary.  It's where I go when I don't know what to do with myself.  It's always been my escape.

But lately, I haven't been able to take these long, thoughtful showers.  I've always been in a rush and the shower has just become a sort of quick routine that simply needs to happen.  And maybe that's why I've been feeling a bit misplaced.  Like I've got a storm of thoughts buzzing around in my mind and I don't know what to do with them.  I haven't been able to use my usual coping strategy of long showers to work through everything, so I've been getting more and more bogged down and confused.

I want my sanctuary back.  I want my long, hot showers.  I want my hours of uninterrupted thought.  And I don't think I'm getting them back anytime soon.  Which means that I have to learn a new coping method, preferably one that still relies only minimally on people.  Just because I prefer to rely on myself in order to solve my problems.  Maybe that's just me.