PARANOIA and spiders, but mainly spiders

par·a·noi·a

[par-uh-noi-uh] 

–noun

1.

Psychiatry . a mental disorder characterized by systematizeddelusions and the projection of personal conflicts, which areascribed to the supposed hostility of others, sometimesprogressing to disturbances of consciousness and aggressiveacts believed to be performed in self-defense or as a mission.

2.

baseless or excessive suspicion of the motives of others.

     After finding this definition I realized that I have been using the word wrong, because I don't have a mental disorder... or at least I don't think I have one. If I do, then people have been hiding things from me. Anyways, I usually seem a little paranoid, even with the littlest things. For example, I get paranoid that there is a bug in my drink (especially in the summer when I leave drinks outside on the deck), that there is food on my face after I eat, or even that there is a creepy, stalker, murderer dude hiding in my house waiting to kill me or someone else. However, the most common subject that causes me to become paranoid are spiders. 

     Spiders give me the creeps. They disgust me with their abnormal amount of legs and eyes. The hairy ones make everything worse. Oh, and I don't care what size they are, they are still freaky. Let's just say that if I went into the Forbidden Forest and saw Aragog (before he died obviously) I would probably pass out and then he or his children would eat me. I don't find that a very good way to die. Another Harry Potter reference here, if you want to know how scared I am of spiders, take Ronald Weasley's fear of them and multiply it by roughly 5,000 and you will get my fear. 

    I have had wayyyyyy too many encounters with spiders in my life. One of the scariest was when I was getting ready to get to bed and a spider crawled out from underneath my pillow and behind my bed. I started screaming and asked everyone in my house to kill it. However, they all told me not to worry about and just go to sleep (pfft! They thought I was going to sleep in my bed after witnessing that! They're crazy!) or get a yard stick and try to smash it with that. Long story short, I never found it and slept on the floor in my room after trying to hunt down the spider for a good 3 hours. Another time I woke up and there was a HUGE spider on my wall. By huge I mean about 2-3 inches wide including legs. I then bolted out of my room and into my parents room begging for one of them to go kill it. They told me to go back to my room to make sure it was there then ask them again. Sure enough I went to my room and the spider had vanished. I bet my parents thought I went mental after that. One last spider incident was when I went to visit my grandparents in Texas. My family decided that we were going to drive around until we found some longhorns. So off we went and after about and hour or two of driving my dad stopped the car and exclaimed, "Woah! Look there's a tarantula in the road!" Everyone got out of the car and those with cameras grabbed them to take some pictures. Allen (my brother) asked me why I wasn't coming and if I wanted him to take pictures for me. I obviously said something along the lines of, "Are you kidding?! You couldn't pay me to get out of this car to look at a spider! I don't want to see any pictures of it either!" So there my family went to spend ten minutes of their lives looking at a gigantic spider in the middle of the road. I still have two more stories I would like to share, but these I don't find quite as interesting, but you might think they are, so read on! The last two both took place at my friends house about 3 years ago I believe. The first story was that my friend and I were sitting on a small sofa in her basement when we suddenly saw something moving by our feet. We both screamed and jumped on the sofa at the same time. Of course the spider was HUGE and closer to me. We kept yelling for my friends mom to come and kill it, because we were both chicken. That was the lamer of the two. The very last one was again at my friends house and her cousins were over so we were hanging out with them and my friends two sisters. Suddenly in the middle of the conversation my friends cousin, who isn't all that believable sometimes, pointed out that there was a spider behind us. We just laughed and said, "No there's not," to which he responded, "Look then". We turned around and screamed. As we started to let out our unnaturally loud screams the power shut down. We ran as fast as we could upstairs avoiding the area we knew the spider was located. We started telling everyone upstairs what happened and when the power came back on we all went back downstairs and the spider was gone.
     I would also like to add that I have only killed two spiders in my entire life. When I killed the first one I grabbed 5-6 tissues before picking it up to squish between my fingers only to flush it down the toilet a few moments later. Why 5-6 you ask? Well the answer is quite simple and makes complete sense in my mind, so if you think it is a ridiculous answer, then remember I'm not 100% sane sometimes. My answer is that I'm afraid the spider will bite me through only a few tissues. Keep in mind that this spider was only about 1 centimeter wide including legs. It couldn't possibly bite me though the tissue, but I just had that thought it would. Hey, better safe than sorry right? The second spider I have ever killed was when a spider appeared on my desk while I was at my computer. I freaked out then put a bowl over it so it wouldn't escape while I went to get something it kill it with. I ending up using the same technique as the first one because I was quite successful the first time. However, it still took me awhile to build up the confidence to flip the bowl over. I did manage, but it took longer than it should have. 
     Also, I would like to share why I came up with this topic to write about. I was talking to my friend Jazmine about how I saw this picture yesterday: http://www.tasteofawesome.com/get_image.php?i=201101311257275ffc7fbbbbe5edfc7c4e4091f866bc66.jpg
(Warning: If you are really scared of large spiders, get paranoid easily, and use toilet paper often, then this photo is not for you)
I mentioned how I was paranoid that there will be a spider on the toilet paper roll every time I use the restroom. She mentioned writing about paranoia, so that's what I did. :) Hope you enjoyed laughing at my extreme fear of spiders. If you didn't laugh, then you are a good person.




P.S. I am afraid of going to science because of spiders. My teacher has a bunch of dead bug in a glass thing and there is a huge spider in there. It is bigger than my fist. Well I estimated that. I have never been within a 10 range of it. It's freaky!!!!! One time someone said "Oh, I thought that was real." I was relieved thinking that it was fake until my teacher said, "Oh no it's real." Gosh darn it. Why can't she lie and make me not scared of science. Writing this gives me the creeps!