Insects in the Mind of Dreamspider

I imagined mud slick with a film of water atop, gleaming in the unbearable spring sunlight, with no leaves yet able to shade the earth. In the mud, a hundred crawling insects, scribbling with their legs a vivacity for life, for hunger, a tingling excitement. And yet I look upon them with a twisted expression of disgust. I want to bleed out far far away from the insects, from the mud, from the sun. Somewhere cold and hard and lifeless, and have my body burned, so that I may never risk experiencing their presence. 

What is this vision I occasionally have?

One of the first memories I have regarding bugs was buried so deep in my subconscious I had completely emptied it from my mind until recently, when my mother reminded me of the one emblematic item of the memory: an ugly, upholstered blue chair. 

As a child, probably about the age of 4, this chair was huge to me. It was a dull gray-blue. Its corduroy texture was soft, too, and I remember the feeling of sinking into it. Often, my sister and I would sit on it together. It was just big enough for the two of us. And of course, as two disgusting little children, we often ate on the chair and dirtied it with crumbs and things. On this particular day I recall the front door of our house was open, and a great gleaming white sunlight struck beams across the floor. A less intense, but still brightly passive light came in through the huge window beside the door. I suppose it must have been early in the day, before noon, as the front of our door faced north-east, and this kind of light was only possible while the sun was still making its grand passage towards the apex. The blue chair was situated between the door and the window. I was doing something forgettable upon the chair, probably watching TV or playing with my sister. In my bored (and therefore observant) state, I began to notice something unpleasant about the chair I was sitting on. I remember a feeling of dawning horror as I noticed one ant, then two, then a dozen crawl in and out of the cushions, marching underneath the blue chair, and scaling its sides. Like most people would, the feeling of disgust, recoil, and dirtiness overcame me, yet at such a young age I simply did not get up and run away, not immediately at least. I was always a…. unreactive, rather shell-shocked child. I didn’t do anything unless expressly directed by another. I suppose my mother, witnessing my grim look, followed my eyes to see the insects. It wasn’t until after she pointed out the ants that I leapt from the chair, hopping through shivers of disgust, and running my hands up and down my arms and neck, just in case any bugs had crawled onto me. If I remember correctly, my sister was with me too, and soon left the chair to do the same. My (exceptionally brave, in this moment) mother plunged her hand into the couch cushions, revealing a rotted banana peel that the ants had apparently been feasting on. She immediately proceeded to scold my sister and I for being so disgusting as to leave food on the chair; although I recall, to this day, that the banana peel could not have been mine, as I had not eaten a banana for many days, and the peel appeared only two days old (at most!). But nonetheless, the chair was infested, and had to go. 

Infestations have seemed to follow me all my life. Or perhaps I am just particularly focused on the instances of them happening? I don’t have a great sense of what other people’s experiences have been. Ants were always a pester in that old house, it was a constant battle against them. Finding them in the cabinets, by the doors, in the chairs, in the garbage, etc etc. I can’t tell if it was the nature of the house being so close to the outdoors (our back yard was several miles of woods, although we obviously did not own all that property), or whether it was the perpetual state of disaster the house was in. But there were ants.

I also remember how at this young age I was still quite interactive with the bugs of the world, unlike today. I remember in that house catching spiders and keeping them in jars. My brother showed me how to make sugar water and leave it outside to attract hordes of hungry ants. Together we would capture and feed them to the spiders. I always felt wrong about this. As I watched oceans of ants form at the puddles of sugar-water in our driveway, I wondered with fear if they would crawl into my room at night to enact revenge for their friends, prisoners and martyrs in the spider / human / ant war. Of course, the spiders all fucking died because you can’t keep spiders in closed jars and just drop a couple of ants in there for them to eat. I also remember my brother and his friends frying ants with magnifying glasses, and how I would argue with them and cry about it until they would just walk away and leave me alone on the white cement. Occasionally I would pick up the magnifying glass and try to kill the ants myself, maybe trapping them in a chalk circle, watching with a mix of pity and frustration as they failed to escape this quite menial prison. As my guilt prevented me from killing them I’m sure, in retrospect, that I simply tortured them for what must have felt like hours to their short, ant-lives, likely giving them ant PTSD. Deepest apologies to ant-society.

In the second house I lived in there were also infestations. Moths and maggots occasionally in the food, far too many beetles in the attic (and in my room), and bedbugs. Not to mention the basement walls coated with black mold. What squalor, what horror. It seemed nothing was safe to touch, no wall clean to lean upon, no chair okay to sit. I constantly checked my hair, my pillows, my bed, my curtains, my walls, my ceilings, my backpack, my hair, my cups, my food, my hair, and everything to avoid the bugs that seemed always to be lurking in the shadows, appearing only when I let down my guard. 

By a young age I had learned to keep my mouth shut, to not ask for help, to hide in the corners, to stifle my cries, to not react, and most importantly, to not like or dislike anything- both of which were opportunities for ridicule, punishment, humiliation, and manipulation. If I was to feel anything it was to be a shameful secret. I kept numerous diaries, often plunging them in water, burning them, or otherwise destroying the pages after my steadily rising paranoia got the better of me. I lived in fear of being seen.

Also at a young age, I learned to be afraid. Of course, what other emotion would inspire such repression? I learned to be afraid of wrath, obviously, but I also learned to be afraid of kindness, because kindness would always be taken away, and rarely doled out in times of need. After being poisoned several times I learned to be afraid of food, too; a fear only exacerbated by the infestations. I checked everything I ate obsessively, I skipped meals frequently, only ate what I could make myself, or what I directly watched someone make. I needed to be able to keep an eye on things, to check that they were safe, and to be in control of my world. 

And yet, in a household rife with addiction and anger, hatred and resentment, violence and coldness, neglect and dirt, and an overall bubbling sense of psychotic madness, mostly provided by my deeply paranoid self and my occult-obsessed brother, I could control absolutely nothing. And so, the control got shouldered elsewhere. I needed to check. Check Check Check. Check again. And over again. Check again and over again. Check over and over and over again. Check over and over again. I needed to know what was in my food, what was in my bed, what was in my room, what was in everything. My neurosis grew, and it became unfortunate that although I knew I could not express like or dislike, my fears developed into debilitating obsessions that infiltrated every aspect of my life and alienated me at all times. Everyone knew what I disliked (although no one knew what I liked, and neither did I). Help was occasionally offered, yet it felt like a burn of electricity, or a stab of a needle. It wasn’t help, it was another manipulation tactic. It would be used to humiliate me, to force me to repress my fears further, it would be revoked as soon as I started to like it, just to increase the pain. This fear was the only thing I had, and it was the only thing I would ever have. 

I got older, my habits more ingrained, and my relationships more empty. At this point I had mostly lost the ability to trust people, to like people, to rely on people, to talk to people, or to… anything with people. All of my interactions were a haunted pantomime, painfully fake and disturbing to witness for everyone involved. Strangely, I managed to maintain some friendships. While I once hid in the corners as much as possible, I began to learn that being seen can have its advantages as long as you carry a sense of bravado. I assume my friendships came mostly due to the unkillable allure of the overly ambitious weird art-kid who somehow had the nerve to sit at the front of class dressed like a FREAK (I regret to inform you that I was the suit-guy in highschool) and argue with the teacher; oh and also probably because my siblings were local-legends, also due to their eccentricities. These circumstances led to a lot of people being intrigued by me for one reason or another, although they typically did not manage to like my presence. The point is, despite my issues with people, I kept finding myself around them through various means. Although I didn’t like them, I still wanted them in a strange, sort of distant way. I wanted what they had. I wanted to be a person like they are. I wanted to be part of their world, so rich with cooperation and excitement and altruism, which seemed to ever escape me. And as a teenager I began to want some of them in sexual ways, too. 

Even now, genuine discussions of sex register to me as a tornado siren, or a message alerting you that a nuclear missile has just been launched to your location. On a deeper level, my skin crawls and I feel a sense of deplorable rot and decay in my soul. The sense of a secret I must keep hidden from everyone. I used to have this recurring dream: I would be back in high-school, or on a field trip, and at some point I would realize that there was this big silver revolver in my coat. I remember how it appeared when I would finally take it out of my pocket to give it a look, usually in some private space like a bathroom stall or behind a building. It seemed like there was always a spotlight on it, the metal shining with an eerie consistency. It was heavy and cold in my hands. Dream logic dictated it was the most aperatured thing in the world, so I knew I couldn’t just casually toss it aside. People would spot it immediately. I couldn’t hide it somewhere, as it would be discovered eventually, and my fingerprints were all over it. And that was the other thing, my hands would feel… somehow sweatier than usual. My identity was all over that gun. Usually I resolved to just keep it in my pocket, to try to hide it as long as possible. But I knew that at some point they would search me, and they would find it. I considered just giving it to a teacher, forfeiting it and trying to come up with some explanation. “I’m sorry, I forgot it was in my bag when I left this morning.” “This is my dad’s coat, not mine. I guess he carries.” Because that was the thing- I never knew why I had it. I was just as surprised to find it as anyone else would be. So the dream would carry on, the revolver weighing down my pocket, and me sweating buckets and red-faced, attempting to interact normally with my classmates, who already barely tolerated me. I felt dirty, shameful, and of course, a deep deep sense of dread for when my secret was finally discovered. I don’t think any of the dreams actually ended with anyone seeing the gun. Much like real life, you carry the secret until you choose to reveal it. 

And you know, I still don’t know exactly what that gun was supposed to be. I don’t know if it’s a specific secret, a memory, a feeling, or just a plain-old gun. But dreams are much like tarot cards, you take what you can use out of them, and I know that gun is sex.

I have a hard time explaining how the bugs are connected to sex are connected to abuse are connected to guns. This may be where I lose some of you. Hold on tight and let your symbolic mind do the walking. 

While sex led, and leads, to such a visceral GTFO response from me, it simultaneously holds the same allure that it does for mostly everyone else. As I started to come into my sexuality as a teenager I found myself struggling with 1. My inability to be a person, 2. My inability to like or dislike anything, 3. My insane neuroses. Any sense of drawing nearer, any soft touch, would send me careening into memories of times so long ago, before I learned to protect myself, memories primordial, and somehow animalistic and vulnerable and dangerous. Rising in my chest, even now, is a sense of disgust and horror at the thought of kindness or intimacy. Love can always be revoked. It’s work to remind myself that love will not always be revoked. 

I write insects into almost every story I write. They function tangentially, in the background, as symbols, never as the focal point. But they are always there in what I write, and I suppose in my thoughts as well, creeping beneath the surface. In my vision of hundreds of bugs writhing in the mud, the sun makes them impossible to hide. They are something living, in numbers that cannot be quelled. But also in the light, even I have to admit they are strangely beautiful. Their many legs and wings rendering them angelic. 

You may have heard this quote by David Lynch,

“My childhood was elegant homes, tree-lined streets, the milkman, building backyard 

forts, droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees. Middle America as it’s supposed to be. But on the cherry tree, there’s this pitch oozing out – some black, some yellow – and millions of red ants crawling all over it. I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath.”

These insects will never leave me, my list of phobias waxes and wanes across the years, but surely my brain is too miswired to be fully corrected at any point in the future. To be honest, this fear rules my life more than I do. I won’t leave the house in certain weather conditions, or during certain months. I walk far too carefully and strangely outside. I still check most things, I still restrict my diet, and I’m generally hyper-vigilant and borderline psychotic. But I am getting to a point where I feel the robotic programmed pointless nature of it. The chaos continues to whirl around me, and no bubble I build for myself is small enough to offer protection. I stay cut by the drama, I completely and utterly fail to quell my emotions, and more and more these days I find myself needing to ask for help. I am wandering through a world rife with a chaos so deeply revolting, yet in the sunlight so awe-inspiring. While physically and financially I am more vulnerable than at most other times in my life (some of you may also recall how badly I was burned when it comes to housing, recently), my resolution to quit repression has shed a kind of beautiful light on my situation. Sometimes kindness drifts my way, and I’m able to pick it up with a bravery I never thought possible. Gradually, very gradually, shame has started to melt away. I imagine there will always be insects born in the mud, but there will always be sunlight too, there will always be the weird iridescent hue of the wing, there will always be the glittering water film.