Spideyphobia: A Tale of Eight Legs

I’m not sure why I’m afraid of things. There is a whole rainbow of things that cause me angst although I didn’t realize they were fears until now. I thought everyone felt nervous in certain scenarios until I found out from The Boy that I’m actually just a paranoid jelly! I’m going to have a ponder and a rummage through my fears over the next few blogs and try to work out why I have these irrational (or not so irrational) fears.

Let the discovery into my irrational unconscious commence…

Arachnophobia (Fear of spiders)

Oh man, there was a big black spider in my living room yesterday and now…gone. Where do they go? Into my knicker drawer perhaps? Disguising itself onto my hairbrush? The other week there was a sneaky spidey hiding amongst my necklaces hanging in my walk-in-wardrobe… he was hoping I’d put a necklace on and then he could crawl up my neck and into my mouth, BOOM. Not easily fooled though, I backed way slowly and got Crazy Meg to come in and suck him up (with the hoover, not her mouth). Hannan – 1, Sly spider – 0.

This other time, there was a giant spider (at first I thought it was a black crab actually) on the wall in the landing. I was whipping an egg in a jug and The Boy reached up and tried to get it (to throw it at me, probably) which made me freak out. As I ran away I spilt egg all over the carpet and had to move the sofa over the top so Crazy Meg wouldn’t find out and beat me.

Even while I’m sleeping I have ‘dreams’ where I open my eyes and there’s a spider next to my face. Every single time I jump out of bed and put the light on only to realize that of course, it’s too dark to see a spider and I was of course dreaming! I jump out of bed every time. I never learn.

So why am I scared of spiders? Why is anyone? As far back as I can remember I’ve hated them. I hate the way their knees are taller than their faces, I hate that they have four times as many running legs as me, I hate the fact that they are EVERYWHERE and that they wait until I’m out, or asleep to creep into position. I hacked into the internet to research this and apparently, a fear of spiders is so common because when we were dinosaurs, spiders could kill us with their evil little mouths and teeth and so in some people the fear is unconsciously there, reminding them to stay away.

From this I have concluded that my brain is super-efficient. It is protecting me! If I wasn’t so scared then maybe one day I would pick up a spider to give it a little kiss and then it could bite me on the lip, inject its poison and ‘oh snap, I’m dead’.

 I’ve heard that the average human eats 8 spiders in their sleep over their lifetime. Well firstly, I aint no average maverage. I’m Hannan and I’m eating NO spiders in my sleep, you can be sure of that. They know better than to try and slither into my gob. I have a loud scream and a crazy flatmate with a hoover.

So bring it on leggy…

Love Hannan xx