So...

I was working in a crawl space today--an attic space filled with insulation, miscellaneous wiring, plumbing, a few forgotten treasures left in a state of eternal storage, and roughly one metric ton of dust layered over every bit of it. I'd covered my mouth and nose with my shirt, which kept slipping off as I maneuvered through the dark space. Trusses created the network of skeletal structure which allowed me to crawl from the access panel entry near the garage to the opposite end of the house where the laundry dryer vent ducting had become clogged. At the ends of the trusses, bird board let in light through circular screens which allowed the attic to breathe, and allowed the metric ton of dust to enter. It was dark, and one misstep meant falling through the sheet rock ceiling and spilling dust and insulation, not to mention myself, spilling down over whatever part of the house I was over at the moment.

That's when I saw the tarantula by my hand. There was a degree of overreaction, I admit. I didn't scream or cry out or bite my tongue. I did recoil for safety's sake, though in truth, it was involuntary. My eyes, I'm sure, grew abnormally large and my heartbeat definitely increased from the adrenaline. It wasn't monstrous and it wasn't small. It wasn't jumpy, nor was it still. It wasn't aggressive, but it wasn't scared. I'm glad I didn't slip and fall through the ceiling because for all the things it wasn't, most importantly, it wasn't a tarantula. Like I said, it was dark. It was just a wad of insulation that moved when my knee grazed a wire and tugged it just so.

It reminds me that we do not react to the things around us; we react to our perception of the things around us, and that perception might not always be accurate. I try to always be prepared to second-guess myself, to act swiftly but react cautiously, especially when I'm in a dark place.