#inner struggles

My little Gloink Queen. I wonder how her babies are developing. Honestly? I'm a little afraid, not of her but myself. I was raised, like many of us, in a society that freaks out when it comes to spiders. I've seen the video where someone smacked a wolf spider with a broom and babies went everywhere. And when I saw it years ago? My fear was the unexpected babies. But now? How horrifying an experience for an innocent spider and her babies.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting on myself, the way the world was taught to me, and wondering why. The more I learn about spiders, the more I learn how reasonable, good, and harmless they are, the more difficult it is for me to understand the things I was taught. And why so many of us were taught that. I don't have a good answer.

But. I suppose I can be glad that I can see beyond what I was taught. And I'm so scared when her babies hatch, what if I'm still that same person who is scared? Of a cluster of spiders all on their mom?

I can't choose my body's reaction. I can't choose the impulse that happens. But I can choose my actions. I'm choosing love. So long as there are babies in that egg ball? I'm going to protect momma and love her. And I already love those babies, I hope they thrive. Maybe? If I choose love, then I can chance l change my nature, and see them for the beauty they are. It's what I want to do and be. I wonder if anyone who follows me has ever faced the same struggle?

Under the pulsing glow of pink and blue neon lights, Marla strutted onto the stage like she owned it. The music thumped through the floorboards, steady as a heartbeat, masking the sound of bills sliding into garter belts and muffled catcalls. To the world, she was “Lola Fire”—a confident, untouchable enchantress who moved like liquid silk. But the real Marla lived in the silence after the music stopped.

After her shift, she’d change into jeans and a hoodie, erase her glittery mask with makeup wipes, and ride the last train home. Her tiny apartment smelled of vanilla candles and the faint scent of old books. A photo hung crooked above her kitchen sink: her, age ten, in overalls with a skinned knee, hugging a golden retriever in her backyard. Before everything changed.

Marla didn’t hate her job—she was good at it, and it paid the bills. But every time she counted her tips, she wondered what it would be like to be invisible. To walk into a coffee shop and not be recognized. To sit at a desk in the morning instead of curling into bed as the sun rose. She wanted simplicity. A dog. A garden. Maybe someone who saw Marla, not Lola.

On Sundays, she attended a creative writing class at the local community center. She never told anyone where she worked. There, she was just Marla—the woman with a sharp wit, a love for poetry, and a secret she kept folded between the lines of every story she wrote.

One evening, after class, her instructor—Daniel—walked with her to the subway.

“You write like someone who’s been waiting a long time to speak,” he said.

Marla smiled softly. “Maybe I have.”

Daniel didn’t pry. He didn’t judge. And for once, she didn’t feel the need to pretend. Week after week, he listened. And when he finally asked her to dinner, she hesitated—not out of fear, but hope.

“Only if you’re okay with knowing the real me,” she said.

“I’ve been reading her for months,” he replied.

That night, for the first time in a long while, Marla didn’t wash away the glitter. She let it stay, a shimmer of the past she wasn’t ashamed of anymore.

Maybe the line between dreams and reality was thinner than she thought. Maybe normal wasn’t about fitting in—but being seen, and still being loved.

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As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. (Genesis 15:12) Sometimes even when we’re doing the right thing, and going in the right direction, things get worse instead of better. In our most difficult times, that “worse” is not because of bad things happening “out there” in the big bad world, but because of things happening right where we…