Scared? Do come inside my spider phobia

About 2 a.m. one night, I saw a spider near the patio door. I couldn't move and I started whimpering. I didn't realize how loud I was until my daughters, one by one came running from the bedroom. One of us hit him and smooshed the broom over and over into his body. When the broom was lifted, we discovered that he was a she and all her little babies were trying to escape across my living room floor. I screamed, broke out in a sweat and sprayed the area with Raid til we could barely breathe. Then I vacuumed, moving the furniture around, to make sure I'd covered the area. I refused to sleep that night.

Unlike the character in the movie, "Arachnophobia" (yes I've watched it numerous times, but never at night) I don't have an early memory of a spider crawling on me or being dangled in front of me. But throughout my lifetime spiders have been my nightmares, even in the daytime.

I can't ever recall a time when I wasn't afraid. When I was little, living in my parent's home we frequently had what Dad called house spiders; these gray irritating creatures about the size of your thumbnail - legs and body combined. They congregated in the corners and crevasses between the ceiling and the wall. When I had to kill them, nearly every day, I screamed; and I've been screaming since.

Screaming and whimpering when my scream is stuck, is the only way I can even attempt to face my fear. My father used to tell me that if I killed enough spiders (because I used to scream for him to do it) then I wouldn't be afraid anymore. At his house there were mostly these thumbnail spiders. When I moved into my own below ground level apartment in Baltimore, I discovered much bigger spiders that found elusive entrances into my apartment.

I discovered this by accident. I used to turn off all the lights at night when we went to bed, except for a small one in the kitchen. One night when I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I flipped on the light in the hallway and out of the corner of my eye saw something big and black in the middle of the beige hallway carpet. I turned and saw a spider as big as a newborn's hand sitting in the hallway. And for the ten years my daughters and I lived in this apartment, spiders that size came in through the patio door, jumped out of a vent on the wall by the door and fell out of the overhead heating and cooling vents at random.

Every day and night that I encountered one of these monsters my body shut down completely. Because I had to deal with one everyday and since they're nocturnal, every night it should have become old hat right? Not so.

My daughters knew when there was a spider around. I usually couldn't move. Wherever I saw the spider was where I stayed because I was afraid that if I moved he would disappear. If he disappeared and I couldn't find him, I wouldn't sleep, eat or perform any other function. I'd become obsessed about finding him and killing him.

So I stayed still and usually the only audible sound I could muster was whimpers and that's the sound my daughters would hear.

One night, I was standing in the doorway of my daughters' room talking with them and I looked up toward the ceiling vent by the window because something black hanging there caught my eye. For a minute neither of us could tell what it was but when we started to step closer to get a better look, it moved. Then, it dropped and it was so big that its body made a "thud" sound when it hit the table where all their games were sitting.

I screamed and went into panic mode. I was scared it would crawl away and we'd never find it. I yelled for somebody to get the spray. With the big ones my method was to use the spray on them first to render them as immobile as possible because for me to get near them was impossible. I could feel myself shaking, my heart was beating faster, and I couldn't stop looking above my head to make sure there weren't any spiders on the ceiling where we were. I had to go over there to the table so I started moving .... and whimpering.

Having the girls there helped, I knew I wasn't alone, but I was terrified and I had to get close to where this monster fell and I couldn't see where he was. I moved their twin beds away from the area where he dropped so I could have a clear view. One of the girls gave me the broom and I stood on the bed to poke at the boxes of games under the table that were against the wall but he didn't run out. By this time I was almost hysterical, crying nonstop and one of my daughters was crying behind me. To top it off, we didn't have enough Raid (it was half a can full, not enough for me). Just then he crawled from behind the table, staying near the crevasse between the floor and wall. He wasn't moving fast but he was big and I think his slow movements intensified my terror. I was crying so hard I had to keep wiping my eyes so I could see him. I sprayed him over and over but he wouldn't stop moving and then I ran out of spray so I told the girls to "get me the bleach!"

When he was finally dead and one of my daughters (I was too scared to get near him) scooped him into the dustpan to flush down the toilet, I tried to calm down. But every shadow now became a spider; every light had to be on at night to see these nightcrawlers; and my fear has intensified.

In the past I was only afraid of being near a spider or horror of all horrors having one crawl on me. One time when I was a teen my sister saw a daddy long-leg crawling on my back. She made the mistake of telling me why she was calling me to her and I took off running around the yard with her chasing me telling me to "hold still so I can get it!"

Now my fear is being bitten by one - particularly the brown recluse. Working in the health field I've seen what a spider bite can do and access to the Internet and friends' stories have given me info on what a brown recluse spider bite can do.

My fear has intensified so much that I want to move and my research includes finding out what types of spiders inhabit particular areas - so I don't go there.

I'm a country girl at heart but I can't enjoy myself in the grass or in country settings anymore; I'm always worried about having a spider crawl on me. I cover my head if I'm visiting my sister because there are always spiders in the corners or webs indicating their presence. I seal cracks with caulk or household glue to minimize where a spider might get in. And if I see one, I'm constantly wondering where his family is.

I know that arachnophobia is considered irrational. I know all the arguments: I'm bigger than the spider; they're more afraid of me than I am of it; if they bite you, you won't die.

I've heard that hypnosis could help and I heard and watched a YouTube video of this woman who employed "Tapping" to help with her arachnophobia. My body couldn't stop shaking while I watched her let a tarantula that she named Rose, crawl across her fingers!!! UGH!!!

I've killed many spiders and my fear is still real. That being said, I respect the fact that if they didn't inhabit this earth, we'd be overrun with bugs. And as a vegetarian, killing a living thing for me is a constant inner battle. The dictionary defines a phobia as "a persistent, illogical or abnormal fear of a specific thing or situation." That sounds about right in my case.