Doubt creeps in like a spider on the floor.
A presence so small I know with most of my brain I have no reason to fear. Yet, the sliver of my more primal brain speaks louder, gives the spider a bigger mouth and a louder voice than I could even imagine fitting in such a small doubt-body.
The room quickly disappears, and all I see is Spider.
I say to myself:
“This world is certainly big enough for me and it both.”
I tell myself:
“I am much bigger than a spider!”…but what’s that to the spider? who carries enough venom to take down a woman twice my size?
We start a staring context. I wonder whether the spider is, as they say, really at all afraid of me? We are both planning our escapes and our attacks.
Then, the spider blinks and opens its big-large mouth, teeth showing:
“You stupid girl! Go back! Go back on what you said. Go back on what you felt. Who else will love you? What other goodness could possibly come your way? You’ll be alone. You’ll lose it completely. You think you deserve more?” It questions.
Darkness encloses us, an un-cozy pair.
“You think you deserve more?!,” it’s practically laughing now.
“Who are you! Who are YOU?!”
“You’re nothing! You’re lucky for any kindness you get!! Any break that comes your way. You stupid little…"
I step on the spider.
Its leg twitches for a moment. I imagine it is the equivalent of the spider finger.
I lift my foot to check.
Then, a voice out of the dark makes me jump:
“You didn’t want to do that.”
The room reappears, and I feel vulnerable in all this empty space. I’m mad to be discovered.
“Look, I don’t know where you’re from, but around here, we don’t kill
spiders” she says as she steps into the light.
“If a spider is talking to you, it must have something to say”
Now I feel chilly.
“What did it say?”
I open my mouth, my infamously small mouth, to reply.
Nothing.
Nothing comes out, so I close it again.
I gaze at the spider mash on the floor. The light begins to pool in again.
Time hangs there between us for a moment.
I feel the intensifying heat on me, her gaze on me, all her shadowy attention on me.
I sputter out:
“But the spider didn’t know! The spider didn’t know that it doesn't work. That every time I’ve tried I feel like shit. That it’s better off this way.”
She continues to stare at me. I don’t know what to do but keep talking.
“It didn’t know..! It didn’t know that ultimately I’m a selfish person.”
Saying that seems to make her bigger, enlarged by the truth of it. I feel
like I have to talk louder to reach her.
“You weren’t there! Where were you all this time? I have been doing it alone! You weren’t there!”
I feel a kind of release to be saying this. It feels good.
I’m aware that the more I say, the louder I’m saying it. The longer I talk, the smaller I become.
I’ve lost track of what I’m saying now - the words coming out of my mouth irrelevant to the real exchange here;
me, yelling – her, receiving. Her soaking in the darkness – Me taking in the light, feeling the heat –the heat, heat, heat.
All I can do is yell. ‘Look at you’ is all I’m saying… different versions of look at you.
I feel impossibly small now.
Finally, relief comes in the form of a shadow from her boot. For an extended moment, shade and quiet.
I stop yelling. Stopping talking all together. Just breathing now.
Then she stoops, pulls her face down to the floor to meet me.
She repeats, strained in voice, merciful in action:
“Around here. We don’t kill spiders.”
She replaces her boot with her palm, shading me for awhile, until the whole room is dark, until I sense how tired I am, until I feel - despite how loudly I’ve spoken - how small I’ve become.
Doubt Like a Spider