Tangled Web

Dancing with the Darkness [#2]

I am wondering what the end story will look like, entering the part where the road is dropping away and all bets are off. The image pulls memories of a Jamaican road in the darkest night, but I will stay away from that story, the story which is compelling and surprising and mysterious, that can wait for another day.

In those months of drama, that night in the Jamaican Cockpit Country in the mountains was just another step into the shadows. Just another of the rapidly accelerating moves that edged me toward that frozen state of fear.

I am not recovered from those years. I exited those years, leaving behind the lived decisions, formed well below the threshold of choice. And I am not fully recovered from the legacy of thinking that had me living my little limping life contrasted with the strong woman moving forward and leaving all that decisively behind.

I miss the adventure. I still do not feel safe. Guarded, on edge, still a little broken. Or again a little broken.

Is that the throughline? It can’t be one of being broken, staying broken, in a starlit field of honey filled flowers. That I can’t see. Whatever.

Photo by Anna Marie on Unsplash

I killed a spider this morning. Inadvertently. I didn’t like it. It was near my blue bathrobe hanging on a hook on the back of the bathroom door. A very fast spider. With my emptied night water glass, I knock him gently to the ground. Again very fast. I act, not as fast. The glass slightly hits him. I lift the glass to check and there is no movement. I cringe that the spider is maybe in pain. If alive. I get a tissue. I squish the spider and then flush him. I am heartbroken. I partially wake my husband and tell him I killed a spider. I think this is not a good first act of the day. He says I think you have a pass. He knows this was not my plan. I feel bad anyway.

I walk into the kitchen, put on tea water. The world reveals itself in my mind, the morning slow roll-in of reality.

I think about the young children injured, been injured, being injured. I cannot imagine being someone who could injure on purpose, cover rather than confess, or insist on protecting all that is evil. I have to, yet cannot, imagine the tangled web of cruelty and power. The broken patriarchy in a broken death grip.

I likely kill house spiders inadvertently all the time when I put them or direct someone to put them outside. I learned recently they will die outside because they are designed to live in my house and not designed to survive in the outside world. I am complicit I believe. But I am not willing to share my house with them, more than I already do without knowledge. I still gently take them out, believing they have a chance.

Whatever possible metaphor doesn’t even work because it’s all too dark, the link between power, money and the sexual abuse of children and women. Fuel the world, this tangled web of evil.

My shoulders toward the sky, again, shuddering and weak. Spider, spinning away. I’m sorry.