Fear

I am afraid of spiders.

Tonight I pulled a blanket out of a chest and I shook it out before I wrapped it around my shoulders, I shrieked and leapt away from the big black spider that had appeared at my feet. The blanket was puddled at my feet as I gasped for breath. I went upstairs to grab a shoe to kill the spider and, when I returned, I looked down to aim for the spider and shrieked again--seeing for the first time the web that must've been rubbed from the blanket onto my sweater. Jumping up and down, I ripped my sweater off and stood there gasping from adrenaline once more. More than once I stalked towards the spider, only to run away when the spider moved. In between I watched it, working up my nerve to get close enough to kill it. Finally I forced myself not to run away and I killed the spider.

I am afraid of relationships.

More than a month ago he asked if I wanted to go out with him. That first night I could barely meet his eyes, afraid of crossing that boundary. Even as we started seeing each other I was tentative, afraid that I wasn't attracted to him and afraid that I didn't want to be with someone so naive again. As he kissed me goodnight on his threshold a couple weeks ago I breathed in his scent and felt myself start to relax for the first time, start to enjoy our kiss, and then I blinked at the distance I had already put between us. Last weekend I decided that it was time to decide for certain about our chemistry so I arranged for us to enjoy an evening together alone. We watched two movies, holding onto each other in the dim light, but each time he glanced toward me I looked away. Afterward I'd have normally said it was time for him to go, but the moment of decision had come and I leaned into him. Finally I didn't pull away.

Live and let die

I hate spiders. I have always hated spiders.

Most of the time when I was growing up and I saw a spider in my room, I could convince my dad to come kill it for me, but once when I was 10, my dad was at work and my mom was unsympathetic when I asked her to come kill the spider I'd seen. She followed me into my room and I hoped that she was about to exterminate the arachnid. Instead she told me to kill it. I approached the spider on the wall, but began to whimper in fear as I approached it. When she raised her voice to demand that I smash it, the whimpers turned into tears and this simple task turned into a battle of wills. We argued for 20 minutes with me sobbing and her yelling. The spider seemed oblivious to the humans arguing over his fate. Eventually the pressure became too much, and I stunned and killed the spider with a shoe between sobs.

That experience influenced the "live and let live" policy that I instituted when I moved into my first apartment. I saw very few spiders there, despite the fact that I lived on the ground floor, and I had no trouble letting those few spiders return to their dark homes after I saw them in my home. One night I was laying on my bed reading a book when movement out of the corner of my eye startled me. I looked over and realized that a spider had dropped off the ceiling onto my bedspread. I squealed and leaped off the bed. At that moment I frantically wished for a roommate to come find the sneaky spider on my quilt. I armored up for the battle, putting on shoes and grabbing a handful of paper towels, and began the hunt.

My patience paid off when I found the spider on the carpet next to my bed. I grimaced and whined a little bit as I ground the paper towels on the spider's body. I stepped back once the job was done and took some deep breaths, trying to calm the adrenaline pumping through my body.

That was when I decided, it might be an unpleasant chore, but from now on I would kill all spiders that dared to enter my house.