Threads of Survival

I killed a spider three weeks ago.

I was late to church and desperately needed a shower, and there it was - directly in the basin of my tub. I’m absolutely terrified of spiders. It’s been a life-long fear forever. I had noticed it earlier in the day. I knew I’d need a shower, but I prayed it would move out of the way and both of us would continue along the threads of our lives - the spider down another drain, me clean and on my way.

Perhaps this all sounds trite. But I’ve thought about this moment every single day, multiple times a day since it happened. I don’t know why it’s haunted me so. If I’m being honest with you, I’ve successfully avoided spider-removal for the majority of my life. There has always been someone else - my brother, a boyfriend, my housekeeper - who has stepped in to help me. But at that moment, there was no one but me.

I tried to channel the strength that I had seen in others. Courage, I’ve come to realize, is not the absence of fear, but acting despite it. I didn’t want to touch it - after having one unfortunate incident with a spider that jumped at me, I possessed an irrational fear that they all could. The trick with a piece of paper and a cup felt out of hand - and I also didn’t have either instrument within reach. The most civil thing I could think of was gently turning on the faucet to alert it to my intention. Water lightly splashed it. It didn’t move. I turned the faucet off to give it a chance to run. It didn’t. I didn’t know what else to do, so I tried again.

The water was too much this time. Its poor little legs buckled. I realized I had accidentally killed it - how do I make this ending swift? I turned up the water in hopes that it would flush down the drain, but the spider remained in place, legs curled up. I turned the faucet off, still too terrified to try to pick it up, but not sure what else to do. It moved a leg. And another. Oh my god, it was alive.

I shook, frozen between mercy and fear. What do I do? How do I rescue an injured spider? Is it better to just kill the spider and leave it be? An attempt at a quick death seemed like the noble thing if you’ve injured an animal and its chances of survival are low. I turned the faucet back up again.

We repeated this cycle six times. I’ve never felt crueler in my life. I thought I had successfully ended its life quickly, and then a leg or two popped out again. Maybe I should have forgone my shower. I was too far gone at this point, rescuing it seemed impossible - I saw no alternative other than a watery burial down the drain.

Have I lost my mind? Most definitely.

But as I start cancer treatments, I think about that spider’s resiliency. I think every day about it hiding from the water and gingerly sticking its leg out to make a move. I wonder what it was thinking. I wonder if it prayed to its god with the same urgency as me, united in our will to live.

Every day, I return to this moment, wrestling with the humbling truth that binds us together - both small and scared, both fighting fiercely against the tide.

And I wonder, from the depth of my core, as I gingerly stand up under the weight of treatments, what makes my life more precious than its own?