Tuesday, August 19, 2008 | by nathan

What It Feels Like For An Arachnophobe

[image redacted - even a photo of a spider creeps me out too much to have on my own website]

First off, my apologies to anyone who simultaneously follows me on Twitter and reads this blog, because you’re getting entirely too big a dose of this drama. But after the day I had yesterday, I couldn’t not blog about my arachnophobia.

Also, I’m sorry if that photo scares you. It’s freaking me out, and I’m effing typing underneath it.

So yesterday was freshman move-in day at the university where I work, and staff were basically told that, as far as parking goes, we could piss up a rope. I got up and it was raining, a welcome change from the usual triple-digit, miserable August weather, but still. Raining, and no place to park at work, and tons of freshman carrying boxes everywhere, and I e-mailed to say I’d be working from home. My boss wrote back telling me that that sounded like a wonderful idea, and where could he sign up?

So I made my usual smoothie for breakfast, let the dog out, and got to work.

At about 10:30 my stomach started to growl a little, so I thought I’d take 5 minutes and run up to Eley’s for some fresh fruit. Still in my pajama pants, t-shirt and canvas Crocs, I walked out the door. As I was locking it I saw a little movement out the corner of my eye, and looked down. The next thing I knew I was in my front yard, eight feet away, and screaming my head off. That spider in the photo had been at my feet, living and existing, and that’s a problem for me. It was bigger in diameter than a half-dollar, and watching me, sticking its legs out like it was making gang signs. Every time I moved, he moved.

For me, arachnophobia is a psychiatric issue. Snakes, mice, bees - none of these things frighten me all that much. But when I see a spider, I’m running away and screaming before I even consciously register what it is that I’ve seen; that’s usually my first clue. Oh, look. I’m running away, terrified. I must’ve seen a spider. I can’t explain it, and I’m not altogether sure I can change it. It just is.

Here’s the problem. So I’m standing there, yesterday, outside the house. See, and I could’ve gone about my plan to go to the store for some fruit, but then I’d have to leave the spider to his own devices, and there were two possibilities. In Possibility #1, I come back and he’s still there. Between me and the front door. Which means, of course, that I won’t be able to go through the front door and into the house, and now here I’ll be holding groceries.

In Possibility #2, I come back and he’s gone. I’ll still be scared to go through the front door, and I also won’t know where he is, which means, of course, that he could jump out at any time and EAT ME.

Squishing him with my shoe isn’t an option. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it really felt like there was an invisible barrier between me and him, a minimum safe distance that my mind was making me stay away, and if I breached that, the world would likely end. Madness lay within two feet of the spider; it’s a compulsion, and, in this case, it was a handicap.

Usually, if I’m able, I can get just close enough to engage in chemical warfare with spiders. I’ll grab whatever household chemicals are handy. I’ve killed spiders with shampoo, Lemon Pledge, foaming tire cleaner, spray bleach. You name the Item Under The Kitchen Sink, and I’ve used it. It lets me maintain Minimum Safe Distance while also dispatching the threat. Squishing or, God forbid, picking them up with a paper towel and flushing them, requires the kind of proximity that my mind won’t let me enter.

The spider crawled into the space between the screen door and the front door, and I waited, almost in tears, for his next move. None came. Eventually, I realized that I’d left the back door unlocked, and I went around back and let myself back in the house, where I sat, my eyes fixed on the front door for any signs of a breach. There was none. Brian had to come home early to pack for a last-minute business trip to North Carolina, and he looked everywhere for the spider but found no signs of him. I’m still afraid to cross the threshhold of my house, but so far I’ve done it at least a dozen times. Each time I spend at least 60 seconds checking everywhere for him, and when I don’t see him I unlock the door as quickly as possible and charge through it at top speed.

Last night I was coming home from the gym and saw that another large spider had built a web in the archway of the porch. This time I had remembered to lock the back door, and so I took an old copy of the Gazette and tossed through the web, knocking the spider God knows where, and ran through the archway, onto the porch, where I searched frantically, in the dark, for either spider, quickly unlocked the door and danced, fearfully, through it, slamming it behind me.

It all sounds so funny to write about, and I imagine that, were I able to observe myself from outside my body, it would be hilarious to behold. But spiders inspire in me a kind of terror that comes from somewhere entirely chemical, entirely within my brain and totally psychological. People have suggested I let a spider crawl on me so that I can see that they’re not out to hurt me, and my response to this is, "REALLY? DO YOU WANT THE WORLD TO END BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN." Last year Brian and I went to the Oklahoma Science Museum, where they have a tarantula in a cage, and I got tears in my eyes just looking at it, lying there, not moving, unable to get me.

The tiny little spiders that live in my garden aren’t a problem; my fear increases exponentially with the size of the arachnid.

It’s not a fun way to be, but if the treatment for it is to somehow be in proximity with a spider, the answer is an unqualified no. After all, I have spray cleansers and a husband who’s not afraid to skoosh them, and I think I can make it through the rest of my life with those crutches.

It's Not Right But It's Okay