Sleeping with Arachnids

Don't get so worked up, it's not as dramatic as the title seems. But you know that moment when you are faced with something that usually makes you extremely uncomfortable, but this time there's not much more you can do besides sleep with it?

A few weeks ago I traveled to an island called Nananu-i-Ra. Nananu-i-Ra is gorgeous--one of the most beautiful places I've been to in Fiji.

Exhibit A:

Note: This picture was taken with a horrible camera (did you expect anything else from the girl who has had the same phone since high school? It's a really cute phone. I don't know what your problem is.) and the picture is STILL gorgeous. Am I calling myself gorgeous? YES I am. 

We arrived at the lodge at night and went straight to sleep. Sleeping conditions pictured below:

Cats eat bugs, so I guess I was welcome to a few cats crawling into my bed in the middle of the night. ?    
I kept waking up in the middle of the night with mosquito bites. I'd scratch them for a bit then go back to sleep. A little later a cat (or two) would jump in my bed, I'd wake up, find another bite, then I would go back to sleep. The next morning, when I scratched the previous night's bites, I found they did not really itch anymore. 

We were going snorkeling and we got some snorkeling gear from Warren, our Australian lodge owner dude (don't fight my English...it's really good), and I was pleased to find the remains of a dead spider in my mouthpiece. Not wanting to be fussy, I silently and quickly removed it from the mask. We headed out on our snorkeling adventure. 

I'd already been snorkeling in Fiji once before, and I handled it really well. In fact, I liked it. I was confident that I could do it again. We traveled in a little boat for twenty minutes, a Fijian man dove into the water and anchored the boat, and we put on our gear. The water was dark, but that only made me a little nervous. After I jumped in, I adjusted my goggles, and then took a peek at what I was swimming in. I don't remember much, except that it was dark, deep, and empty. I started panicking immediately, and whimpered/screamed as I swam back to the boat. The classy French couple and the Fijian men helped me back into the boat and asked, "What did you see?!" 

"I didn't see anything!!!!!!!" 

Awkward. 

One of my team members persuaded me to try again. Not wanting to be the wimp who just screamed at nothing, I tried again. My team members were good and were occasionally asking me how I was doing and asking me if I thought what we were looking at was cool. I would nod and sometimes say a really weak "Yes." It's hard to properly describe what was coming out of my mouth for most of that swim. I was trying not to make a scene, so my crying was coming out in hiccups/dog whimpers/screams/actual crying. I tried turning around and swimming back to the boat, but one of my team members caught me and encouraged me to keep going. Here came more hiccups/dog whimpers/screams/actual crying. I tried turning around once more and swimming back. I was caught AGAIN. Each time I tried swimming out after I was encouraged to keep trying, my body would do the hiccups/dog whimpers/screams/actual crying. I finally just went back to the boat to wait for the others to finish.

I really have no idea why it's so hard for me to swim in deep, dark, empty ocean. Everyone else was fine, so logically I should be fine, right? Nope. Sorry.

Let's talk about that night, because this long post really does have a point.

I found that the pillow I was going to lay my head on had a dead spider on it. I flicked that thing off and worked up the courage to go to sleep, starting to suspect that my bites from the night before weren't mosquito bites.

The night before was basically repeated, but after I found a bite on my neck (Dracula-style...I'm sorry if that brings an unnecessary level of creepy) I grabbed my flashlight and got out of bed with the intention of putting on bug spray. Something small moved in the light, and I saw a small spider slowly crawling down a thread of web that was connected to me. I couldn't scream because the other girls were sleeping, but I was surprised to find that I didn't want to scream. I didn't even jump. I just stared at the arachnid and thought of my biology professor telling us that we should name our spiders and be friendly to them. My biology professor changed my heart that day. I would like the world to know that I tried to be friendly with spiders. I gave spiders a chance, and they bit me in my sleep. I watched that spider touch the ground and crawl away (probably cackling...yeah it was definitely cackling), and I decided I would never be friendly to spiders. Ever. I turned around and looked at the wall, corners, and windows surrounding my bed and found more spiders that were larger in size. I'm still not sure how many I had been sleeping with.

A week before I came to Fiji, I woke up in the middle of the night (this post is helping me realize that this happens a lot) after having a nightmare, and I realized that I dreaded coming to Fiji. I didn't want to come anymore, but people had already donated money to the cause and I had begged my parents to let me come, so I was too embarrassed to back out. I started looking up crime rates and different news articles about Help International, and freaked myself out even more.

The point? The point: I did it. I came to Fiji! I slept with those arachnids! I swam in that dark ocean! And I have come out of it a more confident human being. You want proof? I’ve been snorkeling a couple of times in more shallow water since Nananu-i-Ra, but a week ago I went snorkeling again in dark, deep water (this time at a place called Moon Reef). Though I was scared and breathing hard, I let my friends lead me to the coral and I looked under and what I saw was the prettiest place we’ve been snorkeling to in Fiji. That’s sort of what happened when I came to Fiji. I was scared to death, but I came and I have had such a wonderful, at times really scary, life-changing experience. 

I slept with spiders, but the next morning I woke up and kayaked to one of the most amazing sunrises I've ever seen. So ask me what you should do when you're faced with something you're afraid of. I’m really not an expert, but sometimes you've got to sleep with those arachnids, you know?