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I maintain the conviction that it is always possible to change. My view is you truly can train a seasoned creature, on the condition that the experienced individual is willing and eager for knowledge. So long as the old dog is ready to confess when it was wrong, and endeavor to transform into a more enlightened self.

OK yes, the metaphor applies to me. And the skill I am working to acquire, despite the fact that I am set in my ways? It is an major undertaking, a feat I have battled against, repeatedly, for my whole existence. I have been trying … to grow less fearful of the common huntsman. Apologies to all the other spiders that exist; I have to be grounded about my possible growth as a human. The target inevitably is the huntsman because it is imposing, commanding, and the one I run into regularly. Encompassing a trio of instances in the recent past. In my own living space. Though unseen, but I’m shaking my head at the very thought as I type.

It's unlikely I’ll ever reach “admirer” status, but my project has been at least attaining Normal about them.

I have been terrified of spiders since I was a child (as opposed to other children who are fascinated by them). Growing up, I had a sufficient number of brothers around to make sure I never had to confront any personally, but I still panicked if one was obviously in the immediate vicinity as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family unconscious, and trying to deal with a spider that had crawled on to the family room partition. I “handled” with it by standing incredibly far away, almost into the next room (in case it pursued me), and spraying a generous amount of insect spray toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it did reach and annoy everyone in my house.

As I got older, whoever I was dating or sharing a home with was, automatically, the most courageous of spiders in our pairing, and therefore tasked with managing the intruder, while I made low keening sounds and beat a hasty retreat. In moments of solitude, my strategy was simply to leave the room, douse the illumination and try to erase the memory of its presence before I had to enter again.

Recently, I was a guest at a friend’s house where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who resided within the window frame, primarily stationary. To be less scared of it, I imagined the spider as a her, a one of the girls, one of us, just relaxing in the sun and overhearing us gab. This may seem extremely dumb, but it worked (to some degree). Alternatively, the deliberate resolution to become less scared did the trick.

Be that as it may, I’ve tried to keep it up. I think about all the sensible justifications not to be scared. It is a fact that huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I recognize they eat things like buzzing nuisances (my mortal enemies). I know they are one of nature’s beautiful, benign creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to walk like that. They travel in the most terrifying and borderline immoral way possible. The vision of their numerous appendages carrying them at that frightening pace causes my primordial instincts to enter panic mode. They ostensibly only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I am convinced that triples when they move.

Yet it is no fault of their own that they have unnerving limbs, and they have an equal entitlement to be where I am – if not more. My experience has shown that implementing the strategy of making an effort to avoid have a visceral panic reaction and run away when I see one, trying to remain still and breathing, and deliberately thinking about their beneficial attributes, has proven somewhat effective.

Just because they are hairy creatures that scuttle about extremely quickly in a way that invades my dreams, doesn’t mean they merit my intense dislike, or my girly screams. It is possible to acknowledge when I’ve been wrong and fueled by baseless terror. I’m not sure I’ll ever make it to the “trapping one under a cup and escorting it to the garden” phase, but one can't be sure. Some life is left within this veteran of life yet.