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When I lived in Washington D.C. I didn’t know a lot of people. Everything was expensive and I lived in a very pleasant residential area without much I could conveniently walk to for entertainment. I’d walk to Eastern Market and buy $7 tomatoes sometimes just for the trip. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but I spent most of my second year there in a major depressive episode. Because of that, and the stress of the job I had there, on weekends, I only wanted to be in my apartment, away from all other humans, watch movies and eat junk food.

One Thursday, I was having a particularly bad week, it was snowy and icy and it got dark an hour or so before I’d even leave work. I got to thinking I should do something for myself. To cheer myself up a little. Something nice. An indulgence.

I decided I wanted one of those big cookies from the mall. And that I would order it and pick it up on Friday after work and then be at home all weekend and enjoy it. Treat myself.

I called up the closest one, but then I started to panic. How pathetic am I? They’re going to know. They’re going to see me and say “How pathetic this girl is buying this entire party-sized cookie to take home on Friday night and eat alone in her basement apartment.”

I decided I needed to get “Happy Birthday” written on the cookie in frosting. Instead of pathetic, it’d be more like “Hey! This girl is popular and is taking this cookie to a party! How cool!”

While I was holding, I decided it would be even better if I had them put a name on it. A guy’s name. So not only would it look like I was taking this cookie to a party, I was possibly taking it to a party where there was a gentleman with whom maybe I had a relationship. “Hey, this girl is going to a cool party with cool friends and her cool boyfriend! Cool!”

I ordered a $45 cookie for my imaginary gentleman friend’s non-happening birthday party. I got the one that’s two cookies and a layer of frosting in between. I know how to imaginary-party.

This is, by far, not the saddest or most pathetic thing I’ve ever done.* And, it had the bonus upside of eating delicious cookie all weekend. I also think about doing it again sometime, only, I think I’ve grown, I’ve worked on my confidence and personality enough that now I could probably just get it to say “Congratulations!” and eat it while pretending I’d achieved something amazing. “Congratulations Nobel Laureate Jessica Clary.” “Congratulations Emmy Award Winner Jessica Clary.” “Congratulations Astronaut Engineer Jessica Clary.”

*Also, when I lived in D.C., I bought a ticket for a weekend matinee of “Toy Story 3″ right when it came out. Friends who had already seen it told me it was sad, and that I’d probably cry, and I was OK with that. But when I got into the theater, it was packed full of wide-eyed innocent children, and I decided I could not be that 28-year-old woman weeping openly in a crowded theater alone watching a Pixar movie at 2 p.m. on a Saturday. I count that as the most pathetic thing I’ve ever done.

So, a few years ago, my entire family went on a trip to Costa Rica. Entire family meaning my grandma, my mom and stepdad, my mom’s two brothers and two sisters, her brothers’ wives, her sister’s husband, the twelve grandchildren, the one great grandchild and the couple who used to live with my granddad. If you’re counting, that’s 25 people.

The first day, everybody was to gather on a plane flying from Charlotte, N.C. to San Jose, Costa Rica. My mom and stepdad flew in from Atlanta, and I was to fly in from where I was living in Washington, D.C. at the time. The night before, my car had broken down, so I had it towed off to the dealership and booked a shuttle ride for the hour trip out to Dulles airport in the suburbs. I got up around 5 a.m., got on the van and rode out to the gorgeous Eero Saarinen-designed terminal of Dulles, where things started to unravel.

I was not allowed to check in for my flight because my passport would expire within 30 days of my return flight. This was not great news. My mom’s passport would expire the same day, and one of my cousin’s would expire even earlier. I assumed they were going through the same thing. I rebooked myself on the same flights for the following day and started furiously trying to call my family to tell them why I was not present for the airplane rendezvous.

Nobody had cell phones with them. After enough calling, I reached a compassionate ticket agent who put an alert in the system so when my mom checked in for her flight, sirens went off and lights flashed and she’s told to immediately call her daughter.

About an hour later, she called me. I explained to her what happened (she says it’s bullshit and I should demand to be let on the plane), I told her they may not let her on the plane either, and then she could just book herself a ticket up to D.C. and we’d go over to the State Department passport emergency office and get new passports together. But no, everyone else is on the plane. My entire family, 24 of the people I love the most in the world, were in one metal tube full of jet fuel bound southward and I was not there.

Since I’m a problem solver, I rented myself a car, went to the State Department, hung out most of the day and paid a significant amount of money in rush fees for a new passport. I went home, slept, and then returned the rental car to Dulles the next morning to get on my rescheduled flights. Of course, since my family was already in Costa Rica, they didn’t know any of this. I can’t call them. I had just told them to send me some kind of ride from the airport to the house.

I got to San Jose, waited an hour for my luggage and then finally found my van driver, who spoke no English. My Spanish is limited to simple statements about the weather, cheese and butter. I got in a large 28-passenger van with him after a conversation via mime.

The day before, a different van driver had loaded my entire family into a similar van and they had ridden this trip together, singing songs and talking and drinking beers. Apparently, also, this trip was about six hours over a mountain. With no common language skills, it was silent.

We eventually made it to a gorgeous rental house where my family was waiting for me, having managed to get, on my own, from D.C. to Manuel Antonio National Park on the west coast of Costa Rica. I went inside the house and start eating everything I could find.

Eventually, my mom showed me to my room. It’s sort of a studio apartment tacked on the back of the house, like a maid’s quarters or something, but nice. You went outside into the yard, around a little walkway and then inside the door to it. Everyone else was too scared for it to be their room. I was too tired to care. I put my stuff down and then I saw a huge spider. To me, all spiders are terrifyingly big, but this one was about the size of a quarter, plus legs. It was against the wall near the door, so I just figured I could open the door, sort of softly kick the wall behind it and it would run outside.

This is what I did. The spider did not respond as I had imagined.

Instead, she (or he, cause I don’t know much about spider mating and parenting customs) exploded into about a hundred teeny baby spiders, who ran in all directions, like someone had dropped a bag of marbles on the floor.

I was finished.

I am generally pretty independent. But after 48 hours of independently fighting an airline agent, visiting the U.S. State Department, and traveling to a foreign country, I was done. I am a single girl who has lived alone since 2005, doing pretty much everything for myself, but this was the last straw.

I calmly walked upstairs, found my stepfather and told him what had happened. He went to take care of it while I leaned onto my mother’s shoulder and basically wept from total exhaustion. He returned, having battled, and I could finally go to bed. The room smelled like bug-killer, so I left the windows open.

This moment, the spider moment, where one thing happens that would be only minorly stressful on its own, instead happens at the end of 20 or 30 other minor and major stress things happening back to back, is a defining kind of thing. Some people just flip out into a rage. I, like probably many introverts, just shut down. Can’t process. Spider explosion is outside of my range of expected possibilities. It’s like when you try to make a calculator divide something by zero and it just says no. Incalculable.

The past month has been a long version of the 48 hours leading up to the spider moment, and it’s still going. I don’t know what the moment will be, or what my reaction will be, but I’m trying to prepare.

Is there a word like “misanthrope” for when you don’t like anything, not just limited to people? Not like “nihilist,” because I still acknowledge the existence of stuff and things and people and places and situations, I just don’t really like them anymore.