My nightmare has 8 legs

When I was a small girl, before I was 5 years old, I was kept in a lifeless room. I can’t say how long I would spend there because there were no windows, the light was kept at an ambient temperature and there was no way for me to judge time. The only piece of furniture in the room was my bed and everything was the same drab off white or tan colour. Perhaps this is one reason why I hate white walls in my home today, I’m sure it has something to do with it.

The scar on my right cheek was caused from a very large spider known as the South American bird spider. This spider was put in the room with me, a form of torture. Fear from what happened in this room, not just from the spider but from many things, most of which I still cannot remember, still affect my ability to function normally. One of the things I feared in the back of my mind after deciding to come to Ecuador, was the thought of seeing the bird spider.

      Imagine if you can seeing this drop down from the ceiling landing on your kitten. It was difficult even looking at these pictures on line to  post here. But last night  while Patrick was in the kitchen and I was at the other side of the house letting Mali outside, he got a visitor. Not the bird spider which is of the same family as the tarantula that walked in under the kitchen door, but still. He put his foot over it to stop it from moving until I came back so he could show me. It was not a welcome site I have to say. A bit of a shock as he moved his foot and I saw what was underneath, this spider staying quite still.I had to turn and leave the room right away, afraid it would move suddenly. I could see it through the crack of the kitchen door, ready to bolt if it moved in my direction, and I started to cry.

From the time I arrived here I have not had reason to be afraid, until now. Matilda and Patrick scooped it up in a dust pan while I stayed out of the room and put it outside, out of my site. I found myself staring at the floor, the corners of the room, and thinking now before I entered the next room, that I would need to start checking the spaces. I got my flash lite out and looked under my bed, looked in the corners and also looked for spider webs. I had been thinking only yesterday afternoon about an Alfred Hitchcock show I saw years ago as a teenager. I was probably babysitting because shows like that only came on late at night back then. The character in the show hated spiders and when he saw one in his bathroom one day, he killed it. The next time he went into the bathroom, he saw a bigger spider, and so killed it too. This went on until the spider was big enough to fill his bathroom and kill the man. It struck me yesterday after this memory came to me, how important it is to face your fears. You can’t kill what your are afraid of, it will only grow in your mind if you try. I was thinking how they killed my father because they were afraid of him and the power he could have over the common people if he was allowed to continue as he was. This thought process I was having began with a search for a certain songwriter from Cuba, wondering if he wrote about my father. Indeed he had, as did many others. After his death my father continued to inspire others, the devastation of his loss felt by so many worldwide. So they had indeed created an icon by killing him. Their fear did not die with him.

La Era Esta Pariendo in Corazon

I asked my shadow
to see how I’m doing, to laugh,
while the weeping, with the voice of a temple,
Break in the room watering time.

My shadow says to laugh
is to see the tears as my crying
and I have been silent, desperate,
and I listen then:
the earth cries.

The era is giving birth to a heart.
He can not anymore, he dies in pain,
and you have to go running
for the future falls
in any jungle in the world,
on any street.

I must leave the house and the chair.
The mother lives until the sun dies,
and you have to burn the sky
if necessary, for living,
by any man of the world,
for any house.

And now here I am rising from the dead so to speak, they did not kill me either, nor did they destroy my spirit with all their  cruel intentions. So how interesting that this smaller version of my nightmare came to visit on the same day as this realization. And because of this visit, I am writing this entry about him/her. This was how I discovered that my story about the spider crawling over my face leaving the scar, has not yet been written for the book. When I went to find it this morning to attach an excerpt, it was not there. So what was it that blocked me from including the story, one I had partially written, but forgot to include? Still the mind struggles to accept that which it knows is too difficult to remember.

So our little friend gave me a gift, his gentle spirit entering the  room at a time when it would be the least offensive to me, allowing me to face my fear head on. Patrick wondered if he should have killed it for me so that I could see it dead, but I said “no, never do that”. I do not believe that we should take a life just because we do not like or understand it. Our fear should not decide another’s fate, man or animal. If I had killed all those that hurt me, made me afraid or caused me to dislike them, there would be quite a long trail of bodies behind me. Spiders are sacred to many and of great value to us, my fear cannot be cause for it’s death.

Excert from:  Finding Home”

“…… I turned away afraid to watch, laying down on the floor and going into the fetal position. I was crying and began to scream for my Papa to come (but of course he could not save me, he was not there) as out of the corner of my eye I could see the black legs of the spider crawl up over my head and onto my cheek. I was terrified and woke up as it took position on my face…..”