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I am someone who believes that it is always possible to change. I think you can in fact instruct a veteran learner, provided that the mature being is willing and willing to learn. So long as the person is prepared to acknowledge when it was wrong, and strive to be a improved version.

Alright, I confess, I am that seasoned creature. And the trick I am attempting to master, even though I am decrepit? It is an important one, an issue I have battled against, repeatedly, for my all my days. The quest I'm on … to grow less fearful of huntsman spiders. My regrets to all the other spiders that exist; I have to be grounded about my capacity for development as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is large, in charge, and the one I encounter most often. This includes three times in the previous seven days. Inside my home. Though unseen, but I'm grimacing with discomfort as I type.

It's unlikely I’ll ever reach “admirer” status, but I've dedicated effort to at least becoming a baseline of normalcy about them.

An intense phobia regarding spiders dating back to my youth (unlike other children who find them delightful). In my formative years, I had plenty of male siblings around to make sure I never had to confront any personally, but I still became hysterical if one was obviously in the general area as me. I have a strong memory of one morning when I was eight, my family still asleep, and attempting to manage a spider that had ascended the living room surface. I “managed” with it by retreating to a remote corner, almost into the next room (for fear that it chased me), and emptying a significant portion of pesticide toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it succeeded in affecting and annoy everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, whoever I was dating or sharing a home with was, by default, the most courageous of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore tasked with handling the situation, while I emitted low keening sounds and ran away. In moments of solitude, my method was simply to exit the space, turn off the light and try to erase the memory of its presence before I had to enter again.

Recently, I visited a friend’s house where there was a very large huntsman who lived in the sill, mostly just stationary. In order to be more comfortable with its presence, I imagined the spider as a 'girlie', a girlie, part of the group, just lounging in the sun and overhearing us gab. It sounds extremely dumb, but it worked (to some degree). Alternatively, making a conscious choice to become more fearless worked.

Regardless, I've made an effort to continue. I contemplate all the rational arguments not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders pose no threat to me. I recognize they prey upon things like flies and mosquitoes (my mortal enemies). It is well-established they are one of nature’s beautiful, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Alas, they do continue to move like that. They travel in the utterly horrifying and somehow offensive way possible. The appearance of their multiple limbs transporting them at that frightening pace triggers my primordial instincts to enter panic mode. They ostensibly only have a standard octet of limbs, but I maintain that triples when they are in motion.

But it is no fault of their own that they have scary legs, and they have the same privilege to be where I am – perhaps even more so. I’ve found that taking the steps of working to prevent instantly leap out of my body and run away when I see one, attempting to stay still and breathing, and consciously focusing about their beneficial attributes, has begun to yield results.

The mere fact that they are furry beings that move hastily extremely quickly in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, is no reason for they deserve my hatred, or my shrieks of terror. I am willing to confess when I’ve been wrong and fueled by baseless terror. I’m not sure I’ll ever reach the “trapping one under a cup and taking it outside” phase, but you never know. A bit of time remains left in this veteran of life yet.