Empathy for Spiders

At 16, my bedroom was the basement. I had a bathroom off of the side, and two storage rooms off of the bathroom. The bathroom had a jacuzzi tub in it. But when I tried filling up the tub, and turning it on, dead and living hobo spiders would come out of the pipes. Sometimes I would take the time to run it, and take out all the spiders. But that was usually just too much work. The basement was filled with Hobo spiders. I wasn't too afraid of spiders. When I found a spider near my bed, I would take a long piece of toilet paper and drape it down to pick up the spider. Then I would walk the spider quickly over to the toilet and flush it down the toilet. Even though I knew the spiders could bite me, I never had the heart to kill them. One day I looked at my pillow, and their sat a big, huge, ugly spider in the middle of my pillow. By the time I returned with my draping toilet paper I couldn't find the spider any more. I was a little uneasy putting my head on my pillow that night. But I did, and went to sleep. If a spider hung out at the opposite side of my room, I left it alone. Now that I know how plumbing systems work, I m pretty sure their were not as many spiders as I thought. I was probably flushing the same spider down the toilet each day. One morning I woke up with a huge welt on my right thigh. It was 2 1/2 inches wide and about a half inch high. It was huge and just below my P.E. short line. The girls at school thought I was a freak. The next night I went to bed and thought, Well, it didn't kill me. If I m sleeping it won't scare me. So whatever. And I went to sleep just fine. Well, now I know Hobo spiders are actually quite dangerous. Looking back I know I should have killed them all. Instead, because I had empathy, I kept living in a situation without ridding myself of the danger in the room. I didn't have the heart for the ugly process of killing big, fat spiders. Empathy for spiders, not a good thing. How does this relate to domestic violence? Hmmm.