If the word 'sanctuary' came to mind, I would think of Toru Ukada, the main character in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle a novel by Haruki Murakami. There are a few chapters about times when he stays in a deep empty well, without food and stuff, just stay inside the well for days, a complete dark and small well. (and now I feel like re-reading that book again!).

Sanctuary; shelter, hideaway, safety, protection, asylum. Where can I find such serene place in this hustle and bustle city? 

I thought I was, perfectly fine. Mind, as a controller that controls me. I believe in 'happiness is just a state of mind' because if so, whenever I feel miserable I could just think of anything that makes me happy, no? Ah. Life's so easy like that. And so I keep everything deep down inside. Tried to be an ignorant bitch. I thought I was in my perfect serene phase. You know, life rotates like a wheel, and there's that moment when you're neither at the very top or deep bottom. Feeling at peace, balanced. There, I thought I was there. Until my friend said to me that I've been living inside my mind and that I need to get out from it. Sigh, confused.

I have to become myself again before 'me'.

Currently finding my own sanctuary. Just a place for be to feel normal again, regaining my strength and my old self. Just mind and I. I would call my sanctuary A Dreamscape. Where there's a pink sky above the horizon. Then do the pirouette for 360 degrees. See no one, see nothing, no sign of living at all. A complete strange nowhere.

Till then, :)

I do feel that I've managed to make something I could maybe call my own world... over time... little by little. And when I'm inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that I'm a weak person, that I bruise easily, don't you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing. It's like a cardboard house: a puff of wind might carry it off somewhere."
- Mari Asai, After Dark.