when eric the hypnotherapist was talking with me somewhere between five and six in the morning this morning about the flying and my relationship, i remembered the spiders.
he wanted me to remember how i am supportive to others and he mentioned that while i am outwardly fearful, others may be even more fearful and just not outwardly so. i remembered the woman whom i could see outside the airplane window running hysterically from the plane that we later flew safely to belfast. i remembered how i was calm next to her and she said yeah, it’s because you have a terrified woman next to you and i felt ashamed that i was stronger or that indeed it took someone more freaked – more fearful – than i to make me feel better.
then we talked of parents and children and how things that might normally terrify you as a parent you totally suck up and react calmly to for the child. then came the spiders. this was the first time i thought i could possibly understand what this singular recurring dream symbol was. in the dreams, though, the spiders and other insects are giant and absolutely terrifying. back in reality, at susan’s day care center in sacramento, when i must have been but a teenager working through the summer, the small children, very cute small children as they always are, with socks dangling almost completely off the entire foot while they run across the carpet, with consistently snotty noses, with bubble-shaped diapered bottoms, asleep in front of sesame street, replete at once with wonder and with fears and insecurities we used to understand but with more trust than we ever learned to lose later on, there they were playing in the yard and there i was with them.
aaaaaaack! there was a spider. i have and had a fear of spiders, but at that moment, i did not. i told the children not to worry, i told them about life and that you don’t need to squish it and that in fact it does not want to hurt you, and i let it crawl over my hand. afterwards all the children wanted to hold it and tried to pet it.
did i run away screaming after that? did the children grow up carelessly handling dangerous black widows, get stung, and die?
i don’t know.
eric the hypnotherapist drew parallels between my work and my fears (and my relationship) which i secretly resented since i don’t think work should play that valuable a role in my psyche, and yet it does make a fun kind of sense that i test software and i try to break and crash, yes crash, things.
he suggested all the testing is for preparing things to indeed fly allright. maybe these aren’t evil omens, but a way to take care of myself, or of others, and of others, or and of both and all and the others and …………….
then he said i wouldn’t hear the birds on the plane but i heard the birds outside the window as the sun began to sneak up on us.