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I maintain the conviction that it is forever an option to evolve. I believe you truly can train a seasoned creature, on the condition that the mature being is open-minded and willing to learn. So long as the person is willing to admit when it was wrong, and strive to be a more enlightened self.

OK yes, I am that seasoned creature. And the trick I am working to acquire, although I am decrepit? It is an major undertaking, an issue I have struggled with, often, for my all my days. The quest I'm on … to become less scared of those large arachnids. My regrets to all the other spiders that exist; I have to be grounded about my potential for change as a human. The focus must remain on the huntsman because it is imposing, dominant, and the one I encounter most often. Encompassing a trio of instances in the last week. Inside my home. Though unseen, but I’m shaking my head and grimacing as I type.

I'm skeptical I’ll ever reach “fan” status, but my project has been at least attaining a standard level of composure about them.

An intense phobia regarding spiders since I was a child (as opposed to other children who find them delightful). During my childhood, I had a sufficient number of brothers around to guarantee I never had to handle any myself, but I still became hysterical if one was visibly in the immediate vicinity as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family slumbering on, and attempting to manage a spider that had made its way onto the living room surface. I “handled” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, almost into the next room (lest it chased me), and spraying half a bottle of bug repellent toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it succeeded in affecting and disturb everyone in my house.

In my adult life, whoever I was dating or cohabiting with was, automatically, the least afraid of spiders in our pairing, and therefore responsible for managing the intruder, while I emitted whimpers of distress and fled the scene. In moments of solitude, my strategy was simply to leave the room, douse the illumination and try to ignore its existence before I had to enter again.

In a recent episode, I stayed at a pal's residence where there was a notably big huntsman who made its home in the window frame, for the most part stationary. As a means to be more comfortable with its presence, I imagined the spider as a female entity, a gal, part of the group, just chilling in the sun and listening to us gab. It sounds quite foolish, but it was effective (somewhat). Put another way, the deliberate resolution to become less scared did the trick.

Whatever the case, I've endeavored to maintain this practice. I think about all the logical reasons not to be scared. I am aware huntsman spiders are not dangerous to humans. I recognize they eat things like insect pests (creatures I despise). I know they are one of the planet's marvelous, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to walk like that. They move in the most terrifying and almost unjust way imaginable. The appearance of their many legs transporting them at that alarming velocity triggers my primordial instincts to kick into overdrive. They are said to only have a standard octet of limbs, but I am convinced that multiplies when they are in motion.

Yet it isn’t their fault that they have unnerving limbs, and they have just as much right to be where I am – if not more. My experience has shown that taking the steps of working to prevent instantly leap out of my body and retreat when I see one, trying to remain still and breathing, and deliberately thinking about their beneficial attributes, has actually started to help.

Simply due to the reality that they are furry beings that dart around at an alarming rate in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, is no reason for they warrant my loathing, or my shrieks of terror. It is possible to acknowledge when my reactions have been misguided and fueled by irrational anxiety. I doubt I’ll ever attain the “catching one in a Tupperware container and taking it outside” stage, but miracles happen. A bit of time remains within this seasoned learner yet.