Facing the Spiders
No Longer a Slave to Fear
“DADDY!” I screamed as the vision of a somersaulting, tiger-striped, orange & black spider disintegrated between the rungs of my crib and the wall.
This childhood nightmare is as vivid today as it was when I was young enough to be sleeping in a crib. And the fear of spiders followed me into adulthood.
I once called my next-door neighbor to come over and kill a spider when my husband was out of town. And the teenaged girl was happy to help her silly old neighbor who couldn’t function until she caught and disposed of that critter.
Such irrational phobias I let grow in me seemed to correlate with the real fears of life—the ones none of us like to address—like the thought of losing someone we love. Or the fear of losing ourselves when those metaphorical earthquakes crack the ground underneath us.
What does fear feel like? When it first visits, it feels like a foggy cloud that seeps into your brain and makes you strain your eyes to see anything else through it. As it lingers, fear becomes lead filler in your stomach or a heavy weight upon your shoulders. If you could touch it, it might feel cold and strong, like steel.
Fear can even have a smell. A pungency that causes the gag reflex—the pit in your stomach to rise and struggle to be expelled. Only it’s too big to come out.
If it remains for years, it’s a parasite infecting the rest of your system. Or an orange and black striped spider that just hangs at your house.
And when you open your eyes from the nightmare, the spider does not disintegrate. It stands there taunting you.
Fear can become so big that we need to call in a neighbor to help sometimes. Thankfully, I have good neighbors.
I also have these beautiful children in my life that inspire me to be brave. I have had to kill a bug or two for their sake, and each time, my courage grows.
When you conquer something big in life, you tamp down that beast that has been controlling you. If you have ever had to orchestrate funeral arrangements for someone you love, for example, fear of the little things in life wilts a bit. If you ever sit with someone in the hospital during last breaths, you gain the upper hand on intractable phobias.
When you see a spider coming for your child, you will stomp that thing out to prevent some unruly phobia from taking root in her. “Love casts out fear.”
I’ve had to face a few of those big fears in recent years that make the spiders seem minor, and if I want to go on without the burdens weighing me down, I have to face them head-on with some new skills.
Turning my memories into stories has been therapeutic. But I am not writing simply for my own therapy. I’m writing to draw others into the fray with me. This is a good fight, though. If you unwrap some of these stories—our stories—and stare them down face-to-face, you will feel your courage growing too. You will say, “Ya know what? I lived through this or that and I’m still here. Perhaps different. Perhaps stronger. Braver. But I am still me.”
You might have to change your perspective is all.
As an experiment in retraining my brain—I try to look at spiders differently now. Maybe they are a little bit cute. Maybe they are artists with that talent they have with silk. Maybe I can be nice and instead of killing the unwanted visitor, I can scoop it into a glass and dump it outside where it belongs.
Right now, we have a large tunnel spider living on the outside of our living room window. I’m not calling it gross. And I’m not worried about it since we have a layer of protection between us. Surprisingly, I’ve been watching it build and stretch and hide. I have not asked my husband to go out there and clean up the expansive webbing—I guess it looks good for the Halloween season anyway. 🕸️
Retraining the brain takes a while, but with practice, I have been able to view some of my old fears in a new light.
As I fight fears, one by one, and experience some wins, I’m getting to the point where I can say, “I am no longer a slave to fear.”
As you gain courage, when the ground shifts (because it always will at some point or another), you will be able to claw your way up from the rubble, even if it means getting scraped up in the process. Even if it means making friends with the spider.
I have a neighbor orb-weaver spider that hangs over my balcony. I named her Skultula. She's massive and ugly, but ever since she moved in here, we've had less than a tenth of the bugs we had finding their way in before. Spiders may not be pleasant to look at, but they are so nice to have around.
Shell, as always, I love the way you craft your words. You may not know it, but I believe that you have outlined in your piece the reason that we write: to exorcise our demons...including fear.