Showered at the boy's house this morning. Found a wonderful little metaphor for life in said shower. Brightened my morning quite a bit. That and his roommie's glorious sharing of fresh coffee with me.

Oh yeah, so the metaphor.

I noticed a tiny spider on the shower curtain. She was at my eye level, and she was trying to make her way UP the curtain, despite numerous obstacles, such as the slick material of the curtain, the water droplets all around, the shaking of the curtain occasionally when I brushed up against it...

There were a lot of reasons why she SHOULDN"T be there. But she must have had a purpose, because she had made it so far already (eye level! Wow!) and continued to struggle up that curtain. I thought she was crazy. Why and how did she get there in the first place? She was one determined little spidey.

After I finished up, I checked on her again, and she had not made much progress. In fact, she had resolved to tighten up and curl into a spider ball of sorts, legs kinked together and close to her body. She was almost cowering. She clearly wasn't making anymore progress, that was obvious. I wanted to help, but there was nothing I could really do that felt right. And I was running late, so pep talks were not in order today. Certainly not for spiders I hardly knew.

So I just left her alone. She would gather her strength again, I was sure of it.

This spider made me think of people--myself and friends, primarily. But even just humans in general. We find ourselves on trecherous paths trying to make it, striving to do what we love or move forward in careers we aren't sure of, wondering how the hell we even got here. It is certainly not anything like we imagined when we were young. Yet every day we attempt bigger and bigger things, facing obstacles and judgment from others. But the journey, however slippery, is what is important.
And sometimes, just for sanity's sake, we have to curl up into a little ball and just hold on for a while. This can make us stronger sometimes, or it can paralyze and cripple us. It is all in how you decide to use these sort of "kinked up in a spider ball holding on for dear life" times.

What we all need to do is help each other through them when we can, or, if a pep talk isn't the answer, just leave each other alone to figure it out. And I am sure we all will, in our own way at our own pace.

And for those people who don't ever need that time to curl up in protection mode?

Fuck all y'all.