Spidertales #4: Arachnidiot

Arachnidiot (ar ak ni’ di ot) – n. A person, who, having wandered into an “invisible” spider web, begins gyrating and flailing about wildly.

By the spring of 1994, my husband and I split up after an apathetic five years. It was inevitable. If trust and communication are the foundations of a solid relationship, then we were swimming in melted Jello.

After suburban living, I ventured back to the city. I always wanted to experience the Bohemian life of a single woman living in a flat in The Fan area of Richmond. This was the last hurrah of my twenties, my only chance to be young and spontaneous and foolish without too many repercussions. I just had to get through this divorce and reinvent my life.

Within four months of our separation, everything I knew changed: my husband and I filed for divorce, we put our house on the market, I quit my job, I entered seminary, and I placed a contract on a new house. My stress-o-meter was off the chart.

I was overextended, overwhelmed, and on my own. The spiders knew that.

In early fall the wood spiders come out in Richmond. I hoped that moving to the city would alleviate some of the spider infestation we experienced in Hanover. I was wrong. While wood spiders tend to stay outdoors, they are large, ugly, and create enormous webs across every porch in town. Visiting friends meant playing the game of dodge-the-life-sucking-arachnid. I greeted friends and family at their doors with a look of sheer terror on my face, frantically glancing around for the telltale grey/brown blobs hanging in mid-air.

September, 1994 brought an extraordinary number of wood spiders. Perhaps it was the weather, but my guess is that the spiders knew I had returned to the city, and they were beefing up their numbers to rattle me. As soon as our landlady swept the porch, six more spiders created yards of webbing surrounding the door to my apartment building.

But there was more on my mind than sticky, eight-legged obstacle courses. After seven years away from school, I began graduate work at Union Theological Seminary. It was intense. I put up a brave face to the world, but at home I cried over theological books that read like medical journals. The reality of my failed marriage sunk into my bones. And another move to another home loomed over my head like a dagger. I had just turned thirty as a single woman with no discernable income, searching for a home and a mortgage.

With so many major life changes, I could not focus on any one thing. While in class, I’d be contemplating purchasing a new home. While looking for a home, I’d be worried about my divorce settlement. While at my attorney’s office, I’d be fretting over the remains of my checking account. And while reconciling finances, I’d be writing my Church History paper in my mind. Sleep, when it came, was my only respite.

So you can imagine where my brain was when I was taking out my trash one warm day in late September. Monument Avenue, where I lived, boasts late nineteenth century mansions, built on small plots of land, with walkways between buildings just big enough for one or two people to walk through. While many of the mansions are still single-family homes, some were converted to apartments. My apartment was on the top floor in the rear of an enormous house that had been haphazardly converted into flats. Because of the bizarre layout in the building, taking out my trash was like going through a maze. I walked my refuse down the front stairs, then to the side of the building, down the side alley between buildings, to the back alley where the dumpster was, then back through the side alley.

I saw the spider on my way to the dumpster. I knew he was there, between the brick columns that marked the walkway between my apartment building and the neighboring mansion. Wind blew the web where the squarish spider waited for a late-season, flying beetle to become enmeshed. I avoided the trap on my way to the back alley and made a mental note to do the same on my return trip.

But something happened on the way to the dumpster. Thoughts of schoolwork, divorce, money, and housing crowded out my short-term memory. Amid the impending necessity to decide my entire life’s purpose, the spider’s existence evaporated in my mind.

Until my face hit the web.

The moment I felt the gossamer bands adhere across my face, I knew what I had done. My veins constricted and cold sweat sprung from every pore – my lungs, vacuous. I became hyper-aware: My hearing and sight extended 360 degrees. My skin sensed each leaf breathing. I could smell and taste the color of the air. All at once the spider’s mind and my own snapped into one.

I saw him from the corner of my eye. He held a moment’s pause, overwhelmed at his unbelievable luck in snagging the largest prey of his decrepit little life. Then, with all the tenacity of a jaguar trained on an antelope, he bolted toward my face.

Imagine driving down Monument Avenue, looking at lush green trees and impressive gardens in front of ornate mansions on a sunny afternoon in September. You spy a smallish red headed woman flailing her arms in an imaginary battle with an octopus. Drugs? Psychosis? Interpretive movement?

I have no idea how many impressions I made to passers-by that day. For, I was not conscious of anything beyond the battle in which I was immersed. Nothing except the three-inch spider dancing toward my head held any import to me. In my panic, I thrashed so violently, the spider stopped abruptly, wondering if he had been too ambitious. By the time he began his retreat, I had thrown the web away from my body, thrown my body onto ground, and threw the spider toward the sidewalk.

I was beyond hysteria. I was pissed. Here I was, fighting my way toward the life I wanted, alone and vulnerable, stretched tighter than a tick – and this freakin’ spider was coming after me? ME?

I grabbed a stick, trained my eye on the large gray spot limping across the sidewalk. My insides were oatmeal and my skin crawled all over itself, but, dammit, my independence was at stake. My ability to care for myself, to protect myself, to stand on my own was skulking away from me. I raised the stick over my head, took a deep breath, blinked….

And then he was gone.

I never got the satisfaction of taking that spider out. And he never got the satisfaction of a long winter dining on me. The contest was a draw – in everything except my confidence. I knew I would always be arachnophobic. I accepted that I could never touch a spider or allow one to touch me and still manage to breathe. I knew they would attack me in every aspect of my life. But I knew, from that moment on, that I could and would protect myself at every juncture.

The Kitchen Spider Calamity of 1990 gave me the wherewithal to be on my own. But the Monument Avenue Arachnidiot Incident of 1994, proved that my vulnerability was my strength. Putting myself out there, amid the growing pressures of school, finances, and relationships would only make me stronger in the long run. I wanted so desperately to be strong. And you know what? Before long, I moved into my new home, the divorce settled, I became an honors student, and I began dating again. The fear of failure that stilted me my whole life was now the impetus to spur me onward and upward.

However, even Superman has his kryptonite. Spiders remain mine. But I can honestly say that if I am alone, if my child is in danger, if there is no other way of escaping eight tentacles threatening to pounce – I will fight.

Spiders you are on notice. Because I will win.