Empty webs

I hate spiders, with a fiery vengeance. Of course, I'm the child that was given the basement for my bedroom, which means I get more spiders. They stay mostly out of the obvious places in my room; once and again I'll have a spider that probably wasn't warned by the others that creeps where I can see it. Those ones die really fast. I find the majority of the spiders in my bathroom. I now keep a flip-flop I never wear on the bathroom floor to smash those ones. But they usually leave after a couple days so I let them be, unless they're in a bad place (between me and my shower) or just too big for my liking.

I have been cleaning up my room. A couple weeks ago I stuck tacks in the wall to hang my jewelry on (I don't wear it unless I see it); this week I hung up all my hats (10 my grandmother made me, 3 are store-bought). I am organizing stacks of things, what will go on what shelves (once I can put the shelves on the walls), and that sort of work. Naturally, I'm coming across more baby cobwebs. I hate spiders, are we clear on that?

Why do I find the abandoned webs so nostalgic? They make me feel empty, as if I've lost something. I feel alone already and everything else that's abandoned or alone draws me to itself, swallowing my aloneness to swell the already-pregnant spaces in my mind.

I am reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer right now. It only accentuates my loneliness with a sense of loss. That is exactly how I feel: as if I've lost something. I reach and reach to grasp something intangible with my slippery fingers and I can never seem to keep it in my palms. I want to hold these missing things close to my chest and never let them go. I want to be greedy and selfish over these things. I don't want to be empty any longer.

"We need much bigger pockets, I thought as I lay in bed, counting off the seven minutes that it takes a normal person to fall asleep. We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families, and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe.
Eight minutes thirty-two seconds . . .
But I knew that there couldn't be pockets that enormous. In the end, everyone loses everyone."
                 -Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close