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I am someone who believes that it is forever an option to change. I think you can in fact teach an old dog new tricks, provided that the mature being is open-minded and willing to learn. So long as the individual in question is willing to admit when it was mistaken, and work to become a better dog.

OK yes, I am that seasoned creature. And the skill I am attempting to master, even though I am set in my ways? It is an major undertaking, something I have grappled with, repeatedly, for my all my days. My ongoing effort … to become less scared of the common huntsman. My regrets to all the other spiders that exist; I have to be realistic about my potential for change as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is imposing, in charge, and the one I encounter most often. Including on three separate occasions in the previous seven days. Inside my home. Though unseen, but a shudder runs through me with discomfort as I type.

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

I have been terrified of spiders from my earliest years (in contrast to other children who find them delightful). During my childhood, I had ample brothers around to guarantee I never had to handle any directly, but I still panicked if one was clearly in the same room as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family slumbering on, and trying to deal with a spider that had crawled on to the family room partition. I “handled” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, almost into the next room (for fear that it ran after me), and emptying a generous amount of insect spray toward it. The chemical cloud missed the spider, but it managed to annoy and irritate everyone in my house.

In my adult life, whomever I was in a relationship with or sharing a home with was, automatically, the most courageous of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore tasked with dealing with it, while I produced whimpers of distress and beat a hasty retreat. When finding myself alone, my tactic was simply to vacate the area, turn off the light and try to forget about its being before I had to enter again.

Not long ago, I visited a companion's home where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who made its home in the window frame, for the most part lingering. In order to be less scared of it, I conceptualized the spider as a her, a gal, part of the group, just chilling in the sun and eavesdropping on us yap. Admittedly, it appears quite foolish, but it was effective (somewhat). Put another way, actively deciding to become less scared did the trick.

Regardless, I’ve tried to keep it up. I think about all the rational arguments not to be scared. I am aware huntsman spiders are not dangerous to humans. I understand they consume things like insect pests (my mortal enemies). It is well-established they are one of the world's exquisite, non-threatening to people creatures.

Unfortunately, however, they do continue to move like that. They travel in the deeply alarming and somehow offensive way imaginable. The appearance of their numerous appendages carrying them at that alarming velocity triggers my primordial instincts to kick into overdrive. They claim to only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I maintain that triples when they get going.

Yet it is no fault of their own that they have unnerving limbs, and they have an equal entitlement to be where I am – perhaps even more so. I have discovered that taking the steps of making an effort to avoid immediately exit my own skin and retreat when I see one, attempting to stay composed and breathing steadily, and consciously focusing about their beneficial attributes, has actually started to help.

Simply due to the reality that they are fuzzy entities that dart around extremely quickly in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, does not justify they deserve my hatred, or my high-pitched vocalizations. I am willing to confess when I’ve been wrong and fueled by baseless terror. I doubt I’ll ever reach the “catching one in a Tupperware container and taking it outside” level, but one can't be sure. Some life is left for this seasoned learner yet.