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Confession
thejanechord
Diaryland
notifylist.com
2004-08-18
1:55 p.m.
Some occurrences in life are simply too odd to let them pass without mention.
Yesterday, like every other day, I got on the bus after work and looked forward to being home soon. I stepped onto the bus and was pleased to note that the air-conditioning was on and there were a bunch of empty seats. So, I sat down next to a harmless-looking woman and pulled out Don DeLillo's White Noise, my current bus-trip reading material.
Things went smoothly for a few stops.
I was comfortable, the bus wasn’t too crowded. But soon, more and more people started getting on the bus. There was a young woman standing next to me in the aisle, shoving up against my arm with her stomach every time someone walked behind her.
I do not like to be touched by strange people.
So, it wasn’t long before she started driving me absolutely nuts. As more and more people piled on, I started to wonder if I had taken my midday dose of medication because the bus ride home is one of the most trying times of the day for me in terms of anxiety. I can’t stand being around all those people in such tight quarters with nowhere to go for air. On a good day, I only get marginally worked up, swallowing a lump in my throat every few stops.
But on a bad day. . . .
Well, I couldn’t remember if I had taken my meds. So, I started trying to decide if I should take them on the bus. But it sucks having to take out a prescription bottle in the middle of the bus because I have so many different kinds of drugs mixed together in one bottle that I have to dump half the contents in my hand before I find the right ones.
It’s hard to be discreet.
Plus, taking a second dose if I actually had taken the midday dose and just forgotten that I took it would make matters worse. For quite some time, I worried about this because I knew the bus ride would make me increasingly uncomfortable if I had forgotten to take the meds.
Still, I tried to read my book.
I could only read a few sentences at a time before stopping to breathe deeply several times to try and calm myself down. As I continued staring at the book, my vision blurring before me, I thought I saw something on the page out of the corner of my eye. I looked and it was gone. I started reading. I saw it again.
Shit.
It was a spider. The funny thing is that it wasn’t a big spider; it was one of those spiders so small that you can barely see it, smaller than a flea, almost invisible to the naked eye. And I totally panicked. What the hell would I do with that tiny little bug? There were too many people in the aisle for me to brush it off to the side. The woman next to me was too close for me to brush it to the other side. I sat there with the tiny spider crawling farther and farther across my book until I couldn’t stand looking at it any more.
I just wanted it to be gone.
I put the book out in front of me and very discreetly blew across the page so the spider would be blown into the back of the seat in front of me. The only problem with my plan was that the back of the seat in front of me was barely further in front of me than my knees. As soon as I’d blown it off the book, I started thinking, “Oh shit. It could be anywhere.”
Needless to say, I couldn’t read anymore.
For the rest of the ride home, I thought there were tiny spiders all over me. It was hard as hell to keep myself calm, but it was even harder to rub my hands subtly up and down my arms, brush lint off my pant legs, push my hair back, push my hair back, push my hair back, again and again and again, scratching everywhere because everything itched from the tiny legs of imaginary spiders.
I could still feel them everywhere.
After a while, the woman next to me got up and a guy sat down next to me, and I swear he must’ve thought I was insane because I couldn’t stop pushing my hair back, practically cursing at myself for having long hair that brushes up against my arms and makes me feel like there are spiders crawling all over me.
I’ve never had a nightmare scarier than yesterday’s bus ride.
Today, I picked up my book, opened to the page where I left off, and the first sentence I read was: “The time of spiders arrived.”
Spiders had not been mentioned previously in the book.
