Keep your friends close...(Random Photo Post)



This is a picture of the spider that 'lived' in our front garden for about two weeks. It finally "moved on" when the winter snows came. It (I don;t know if it was a he or she) built it's web in such a place that I could not leave the house without passing (or ducking in case it had expanded the web). I am arachnophobic, but thankfully I also seem to have the mental strength to occasionally, and for a short time, 'short circuit' my fear to be able to deal with situations where action is needed (Like if we find a spider in the house).
However, with my little 'friend' in the photo the only choices I had were to ;
a) knock down the web
b) Call work and resign and spend the rest of my life huddled in a corner forever in fear of leaving the house in case I see a spider.
or
c) Find a way to live with a spider and still keep my sanity.

Now, obviously the 'normal' answer would be a. I mean. Who, epically an arachnophobic, would have any trouble destroying a web? Or even squishing the spider?

Well I guess this is one place I tend to deviate from the 'normal'.

Guilt.

I would feel guilty destroying a spiders web, or killing a spider. Or any thing. (I sometimes even feel guilty if I choose two teabags and only need one!)
If I have, in my mind, no chose, like if a spider was in the house and there was no option to get it out alive I would have to, for the sake of my own sanity (what there is of it) Have to kill it. But still feel guilty.

Is this perhaps part of my upbringing? A healthy respect for life is one thing. But guilt about a spiderweb (or even a tea bag)?? That sounds plane crazy to me.

But anyway. What I meant to explain before I started waffling, was that my way to avoid destroying the web, or staying inside was to 'make friends' with the spider. Accept it was something that was there, and that would not harm me, could not harm me, and was therefore nothing to fear.

So that's how I did it.
And that's why I feel slightly sad in losing it.
Yes. I am insane.