I have a wild room. It’s full of snakes and
rats, Komodo dragons locked in battle, and most especially, spiders. Standing
outside the door, I know the wild things can feel me. They respond as a body,
like a heart beating. As I walk closer, the animals turn, and look, and slither
toward me. Then I realize they don’t want to attack: they’ve missed me. They
want to touch me, because they love my: they are mine.
Then I wake up.
I don’t literally have a wild room, but
this dream has been with me all week. Unquestionably, it’s about fear, and fear
is something we all know, in large and small ways. What I’m coming to
understand is that sometimes our deepest fears are our best mirrors. They can
show our ugliness, but our fears also can expose the best of who we could be
and already are.
I’ve always been afraid of spiders. As a
child, I lived in an old house covered in vines, and twice I watched an egg sac
burst and release hundreds of baby spiders across the room and over my head. I
still remember the terror, awe, and beauty of those moments – but mostly the
terror. So I decided to do some research.
I learned that our English word “text”
comes from the Latin texere, which means “to weave.” Spiders are weavers. They
represent creativity, especially in writing, and are often totem animals for
poets and other creative types, like me.
I
watched an egg sac burst and release hundreds of baby spiders across the room
and over my head.
I also learned that a totem or “spirit”
animal – an animal that acts as one’s personal guide, messenger, or protector
in various spiritual traditions – isn’t always the animal you like best;
sometimes it’s the one you fear the most. These animals reflect an aspect of
ourselves that we don’t totally understand.
I love writing, but it does have its shadow
side. When I write poetry inspired by my very frequent nightmares. I get the
feeling that I’m channeling some evil thing. Take, for example, this line,
written after a dream about being covered in horrible scars: “In your
disfigurement, you are a chosen one. Loved by God, written on in a strange
language with a knife-like pen.” That creeps me our, man, and I wrote the darn
thing.
I have a friend who literally is afraid of
an alligator jumping out of her bathtub drain at night. She’s an incredibly
strong woman with a painful family past and a fully managed personality
disorder. Now, she’s filled her home with love and chicken. She goes to her
bathroom for a half-awake midnight pee, and she thinks about that alligator –
every time.
Komodo
dragons
Alligators. They are powerful, almost
undetectable hunters, at home in the constant shift of the river. They
represent our reptile brain, which houses fear, emotion, and the wild things a
personality disorder might want to set free as a sick prank. My friend is not
afraid of the alligator, really. She’s afraid of herself in the dark. Her
unique powers helped her escape from her past, and those very same powers
threaten the world she built. She is her own villain and superhero.
Choosing love over dear sure sounds like a
good idea. In order to discover ourselves, though, I’m thinking we need some of
both. Rather than repressing, ignoring, or trying to conquer our shadows, we
can try to get to know them and accept them as part of our nature. If we want
to see beauty and grace, we need to go up to the locked door in our hearts,
where our deepest fears and most amazing powers reside together, and jiggle the
knob.
And if you get scared, just remember: there’s
a wild thing in the bathtub drain waiting to jump out and help.
