36 It Was a Thatch Palm

Some things aren’t big or dramatic. They’re just constant. Constant enough to change you.

There was always a counterpoint to anything I said, even when the counterpoint was clearly wrong. Made-up facts delivered with confidence.

Doubled down if questioned. Not out of conviction, but out of a need to be right. And I was the only one standing in the way.

Once, in a hotel room, I walked into the bathroom and shrieked, “There’s a spider.”

From across the room, without moving, came a scoff. “No it’s not, it’s a cricket.”

No one looked. No one checked. No one asked.

I said, “I know what a goddamn cricket looks like. It’s a spider.”

Still no movement. No apology. No acknowledgment at all.

Because the point wasn’t whether it was a spider. The point was that I couldn’t just be right.

Another time, walking outside, I pointed out a tree I liked. The kind where the branches start high up the trunk.

Without missing a beat: “That’s because the rocks shave off the branches as the tree grows.”

What?

I said, “That’s not how trees work.”

The response: “Yes it is. Look it up.”

I didn’t need to. I already knew the species. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that I had an answer, and that couldn’t be allowed.

Confidence didn’t come from truth. Just volume.

And eventually, it stopped feeling worth it to correct anything.

That’s how you start disappearing. Not all at once. Just one casually wrong, dismissive moment at a time.

I’m not always right. No one is.

I even tried to say that once. Tried to explain how constant the contradictions were. How it wasn’t about being right or wrong. It was about something else entirely. A need to define reality.

The response wasn’t confusion or denial. Just a blank stare. Like I’d started speaking a language that didn’t exist.

Some people don’t argue to understand. They argue to win. To control the story so completely that no one else can even see the edges.

It grinds slowly and wears you down.

At first, it feels like little things. Small wrongs. Dismissals you could almost laugh off.

But they build. And they form a reality where your memories get questioned, your feelings minimized, your sense of self starts to erode.

You begin doubting your own instincts. You hesitate before speaking because the last time you said something simple and true, you were told you were wrong.

Your voice gets quieter. Not because you have less to say, but because saying anything feels like walking into a trap.

You don’t always see it happening. You don’t wake up and think you’re disappearing. It sneaks up one small cut at a time.

Until you’re just a shadow.

It’s exhausting. Lonely. Confusing.

And it’s easy to blame yourself. Maybe you’re too sensitive. Maybe you’re overreacting. Maybe you just don’t get it.

But this isn’t nothing.

It’s a quiet kind of erasure. A slow message that you don’t matter unless you’re echoing someone else.

When you finally name it, when you try to push back, you meet resistance. Sometimes disbelief. Sometimes anger. Often just blankness. But always a refusal to acknowledge what’s been done.

That’s when it clicks. It was never about facts. It was about control.

Reclaiming yourself means trusting your voice again. Saying what you see without bracing for correction. Seeing the spider and calling it what it is.

Yes, I killed the spider. Not the cricket.

Eventually, I stopped pointing things out. Stopped reacting.

Because what’s the point of arguing with someone who thinks trees prune themselves on rocks and crickets have eight legs.

At some point, you just let them be the self-appointed mayor of Wrongville and quietly move out of town.

And Wrongville doesn’t stay a one-person town for long. People like that don’t just rewrite the rules. They redraw the map, rename the streets, and start handing out keys. It spreads. Not through logic, but through repetition. Through performance. Through volume.

How I saw it, the person who insisted a spider was a cricket will later insist I was unstable, unkind, impossible to love. They’ll say it often enough, with just the right tone of concern and a few invented stories, and people start nodding along. Not because they’ve seen it. But because they’ve heard it enough.

When I stopped running interference, when I stopped smoothing over the gaffes and translating the nonsense, it wasn’t grief I got in return. It was anger.

Not because I left. But because I stopped keeping up the illusion. I stopped believing the lies.

But really, I had just resigned. I was done being the unpaid press secretary of Wrongville.

The truth is, I had been covering. I edited the stories. Supplied the logic. Softened the impact. I ran damage control. “They didn’t mean it like that.” “They’re under stress.” “They just get passionate.”

I did it on autopilot. Thought I was helping. But it wasn’t kindness. It was collusion.

Once I stopped, the truth started showing. The good choices only looked good because someone else paid the cost or cleaned up the mess.

Without me around, the cracks were harder to hide. The explanations wore thin. The bluster got louder.

Still, the same trick came back. If the problem could be pinned on me, the story wouldn’t have to change.

Maybe I double-check too much. Maybe I ask if things make sense more often than I need to.

But that’s why I’m writing. To put the truth back in order. To stop defending nonsense and calling it compromise.

There’s no real compromise in Wrongville. Just broken signs, loud voices, and one angry mayor shouting at people who already packed their bags and left.

--Disclaimer

This essay is a work of personal narrative and reflection. It represents the author’s recollection, perception, and opinion of events as experienced firsthand. Certain names, identifying details, and characteristics have been changed or omitted to protect individual privacy. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is either coincidental or based on the author’s good-faith memory.

This publication is not intended to defame, malign, or misrepresent any individual or entity. It is an exercise of protected expression, personal truth, and documented experience.

If you’re still caught up on whether it was a cricket or a spider, this piece probably wasn’t written for you.

This is a subjective account, not a statement of objective fact about any specific person.