Who's afraid of spiders?! THIS BITCH! Who is my hero?! Sophisticat #2!

Woooooo lordy, this week has elevated my anxiety to a level I didn't know existed. These recent chain of events has left me with a strange feeling in my body. So, here's how it went:

So last fall, we decided to buy an exercise bike so we could do more activity at home during the pandemic. I haven't ridden it in a long time due to the move and life and what not. So, last week, I told Sophisti-spouse that I wanted to bring the bike in from our patio and put it in our room so I can start riding it again on days where we don't play softball. At this new place we live, I know we've seen many a-buggies and spiders either in our house or on our patio so I knew we had to clean the bike off before we could bring it upstairs. So we brought into our living room, started wiping it down and that's when we started see all the little spiders that were living in the nooks and crannies of our bike. I started getting scared and told Sophisti-spouse that he needed to kill all of them and that I wouldn't touch it until all of them were gone. He got all of them, or we thought. They were mostly small ones but then there was one big one (which I'm pretty sure was the spider that has been taunting me for months,) which he managed to kill so I was like cool. That thing is not coming upstairs until we know for sure there are no buggies left. Husband told me that it was fine and they were all gone, so I started to relax a little. The bike is currently in our dining area since I don't want it in our room just yet.

Well..... we're not 100% sure when this next beast of burden showed up, whether it was hiding in the bike somewhere or from somewhere else but on Sunday, I saw one of the largest spiders I have ever seen in my life. (we think it was a wolf spider. Those things are gross AF) I started having a full-blown panic and started screeching at Sophisti-spouse to kill it. He looked at it long enough to take a picture for Snapchat and let it get away. He didn't listen to me when I asked him to kill it, so it left me in a state of paralyzing fear for over 24hrs. We left to Costco and then came back and I said he had to find it and kill it. I wasn't going to live in my house with that satanic beast in my home. After looking through things, he wasn't able to find it and I'm like "fucking bitch. That thing is going to come after me in my sleep." Husband didn't take me as seriously as he needed to. I was scared to sleep that night and panic-stricken all night. When I left for work the next day, I was genuinely afraid I was going to encounter it while I was trying to get ready for work. I didn't end up showing up while I got ready and at least I knew I was safe, but I was afraid to go home. Once I got off work, I went home and started frantically pulling the house apart to see if I could find it and kill it. The longer I looked, I still wasn't any closer to finding it. I just stood in my living room and started to have an anxiety attack and just sobbed. I texted husband that when he got home, he needed to come find this thing and kill it. I literally couldn't function with it being alive in the house. After about an hour of searching, we couldn't find it and I was just in utter distress. My parents recommended that I go buy spiders traps, so we went to Home Depot to get some and hopefully catch this bitch.

We made our way to Home Depot and bought a bunch of traps. I was prepared to buy anything I could that could be useful but not harm the Sophisticats in the process. Well, once we got home with the traps, we see little Sophisticat #2 batting something around in front of him next to our bike. When we got a little closer, it was the mother fucking spider!!! He did enough of something to the spider to immobilize it temporarily. I was like holyshitholyshitholyshit IT'S HERE!!! KILL IT!!! Husband went for the can of air to freeze it and I ran and got his work boot, almost straight up threw it at him and yelled for him to kill it! He brought the boot down on that bitch and there was an audible crunch to the execution. We pulled the boot up and looked and that thing was gnarly as fuck. Even in its squished state, you can see just how large it was. A mild wave of relief came over me and I was like, holy fuck, its finally dead! I can use my house now. Both Sophisti-spouse and I started giving all the praises to Sophisticat #2 about how he was my hero and the bestest, bravest boy ever and I was so proud of him. He will forever be my hero for saving me from dying via fright. Husband is still on my shit list at the moment for not killing the spider when I first saw it but I'm glad it's gone.

I will say though, even thought the initial fear is gone, that 24 hours that passed between the sighting and the killing of the spider evoked a different type of anxiety. I don't know how to explain it but I know I am still deathly afraid of spiders and amphibians and buggies and all the things, but at this point, I was afraid to be in my own home, afraid to trust Sophisti-spouse for not helping me when I needed it, and now it even has bled into a strange feeling of thinking I'm going to get fired. It literally has nothing to do with the spider but the whole trauma of the situation caused a part of my psyche to deteriorate and I don't know where to go from here. I don't have a real reason to think I would get fired and I know husband cares about me and I trust him with my life, but it has left me with an emptiness I wasn't expecting.

What happens after this, I'm not sure. I don't know if eventually the trauma of the situation will dissipate and I'll feel more like myself or it could cause more anxiety problems in the future. At least the small win in this situation is that damn fucking spider is gone now and won't kill me in my sleep.

How's that for a midweek jostling of the brain?

-A